Softball Recruiting

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Gopher68

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It seems to me that we are getting more CA players than before Jamie became the coach. I know that while Jamie and Alyssa Reina were at NDSU, there were a lot of CA players on the roster. Adding two transfers that are CA natives (Pease this year and Brandner last year) and recruiting beyond the borders - freshman class has no MN players (IN, WI, CO, BC). The class committed to sign in November is 2 MN, 2 CA, 2 WI, 1 TX. Committed for 2021 are 2 CA players. Definitely expanding the range of recruiting. I think recent success and a trip to the WCWS makes Minnesota a more visible program.
 

Gopher68 said:
It seems to me that we are getting more CA players than before Jamie became the coach. I know that while Jamie and Alyssa Reina were at NDSU, there were a lot of CA players on the roster. Adding two transfers that are CA natives (Pease this year and Brandner last year) and recruiting beyond the borders - freshman class has no MN players (IN, WI, CO, BC). The class committed to sign in November is 2 MN, 2 CA, 2 WI, 1 TX. Committed for 2021 are 2 CA players. Definitely expanding the range of recruiting. I think recent success and a trip to the WCWS makes Minnesota a more visible program.
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Agreed. Saw that the ladies just picked up a 2021 commitment from Angelina Deleon, a 2B from California who hit over .500 for her high school team last year. Expanding the recruiting base is big, although the program has had great results with their instate recruiting as well. Nevertheless, becoming a national brand will only help attract more talent and help keep the program high competitive.
 

MRJ said:
Agreed. Saw that the ladies just picked up a 2021 commitment from Angelina Deleon, a 2B from California who hit over .500 for her high school team last year. Expanding the recruiting base is big, although the program has had great results with their instate recruiting as well. Nevertheless, becoming a national brand will only help attract more talent and help keep the program high competitive.
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Agreed. Pitching is the absolute key. They need to go wherever it takes to bring in top caliber pitchers. Others, too, of course, but pitching is the name of the game.
 

Another verbal from way out West, Keila Kamoku a middle infielder/outfielder from Honolulu, HI. She also played for Easton Preps - the same program as Kianna Jones and Shyann Beddow.
 
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Hrothgar said:
Agreed. Pitching is the absolute key. They need to go wherever it takes to bring in top caliber pitchers. Others, too, of course, but pitching is the name of the game.
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Yup. Recruiting is looking good though. Success should lead to success.
 
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Gopher68 said:
Another verbal from way out West, Keila Kamoku a middle infielder/outfielder from Honolulu, HI. She also played for Easton Preps - the same program as Kianna Jones and Shyann Beddow.
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Keila changes her commitment from Minnesota to Mississippi.
 
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Pitcher Emily Leavitt still appears enthused for joining the Gophers for the 2022 season... which makes some sense.
 



ClassOf98Gopher said:
Pitcher Emily Leavitt still appears enthused for joining the Gophers for the 2022 season... which makes some sense.
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We appear to be gaining traction in our national recruiting of pitching. Came close on Jordy Bahl (ultimately committed to Oklahoma) and we are in on many other highly-regraded prospects as well. These prospects — like Leavitt and others — are talented enough that they are initially looking at schools like Oklahoma, UCLA, Washington, Florida, Alabama, Oregon, etc., schools that pretty much get the pick of the litter. But we are becoming a realistic option for many of those that for whatever reason aren’t a priority for those schools.

Hiring Piper as head coach not only may have kept Fiser from potentially joining Lindaman at Florida (they wanted her badly) but it should keep this pipeline of quality national pitching prospects flowing, as people are realizing just how good a coach she is. Good pitchers want to attend a school where their talents will be fully maximized.

You don’t really appreciate the importance of great pitching until you don’t have it.
 

rwlarson said:
We appear to be gaining traction in our national recruiting of pitching. Came close on Jordy Bahl (ultimately committed to Oklahoma) and we are in on many other highly-regraded prospects as well. These prospects — like Leavitt and others — are talented enough that they are initially looking at schools like Oklahoma, UCLA, Washington, Florida, Alabama, Oregon, etc., schools that pretty much get the pick of the litter. But we are becoming a realistic option for many of those that for whatever reason aren’t a priority for those schools.

Hiring Piper as head coach not only may have kept Fiser from potentially joining Lindaman at Florida (they wanted her badly) but it should keep this pipeline of quality national pitching prospects flowing, as people are realizing just how good a coach she is. Good pitchers want to attend a school where their talents will be fully maximized.

You don’t really appreciate the importance of great pitching until you don’t have it.
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Well said!
 

I live in So. Cal and in the hot bed of softball talent. There is so much talent within a 10 mile radius from where I live. Even though my DD plays softball for a very good team, there are some very talented teams/players. Like the Corona Angels, Athletics Mercado, and Firecrackers-Brasher. Some serious talent here. Piper and the rest of the staff should definitely pay more attention to West Coast, and recruit a few CA girls.
 

I did see that incoming Freshman for the 2021 season Sara Kinch of Temecula and 2022 incoming freshman pitcher Emily Leavitt in the inland empire were both having very good starts to their California high school seasons in 2020 prior to the Covid lockdown.

While I never know about the high school to college transition In baseball/softball (even as opposed to basketball football), I think these two commitments, one signed, one verbal, look like they very well could be strong college players.
 



daxter said:
I live in So. Cal and in the hot bed of softball talent. There is so much talent within a 10 mile radius from where I live. Even though my DD plays softball for a very good team, there are some very talented teams/players. Like the Corona Angels, Athletics Mercado, and Firecrackers-Brasher. Some serious talent here. Piper and the rest of the staff should definitely pay more attention to West Coast, and recruit a few CA girls.
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But while SoCal is probably THE softball Mecca and we need to be recruiting there, Minnesota still needs a good mix of those Minnesota-residents because, as in any partial-scholarship-dominated college sport, those partial scholarships leave so much less cost for in-state tuition student athletes.
 

ClassOf98Gopher said:
But while SoCal is probably THE softball Mecca and we need to be recruiting there, Minnesota still needs a good mix of those Minnesota-residents because, as in any partial-scholarship-dominated college sport, those partial scholarships leave so much less cost for in-state tuition student athletes.
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I've always felt the program as done a pretty good job in that regard. We've had the benefit of getting a lot of contributors to the program from instate over the years.

I'm not as hung up on instate versus outstate recruiting as a lot of other people, but I think you can count on Ritter and the staff having a nice balance of good players from both Minnesota/Upper Midwest and places like California, Texas and Arizona amongst others.
 

Question to the group. Who were the 4-5 highest nationally recruited/ranked softball players landed by the Minnesota Gophers softball team over the last 10 years?
 

ClassOf98Gopher said:
Question to the group. Who were the 4-5 highest nationally recruited/ranked softball players landed by the Minnesota Gophers softball team over the last 10 years?
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Good question. Allister publicly stated that she could win with the majority of the players from the midwest. Her roster showed that. If you look at the historic NDSU rosters I think there were a lot of west coast players on those teams. I think Jamie had west coast connections for recruiting. As far as rankings go, IMO softball rankings are garbage. You have to play for a big time club team and play in the right tourneys to get eanked. It is far less advanced than football recruiting rankings.
 

rugger14 said:
As far as rankings go, IMO softball rankings are garbage. You have to play for a big time club team and play in the right tourneys to get eanked. It is far less advanced than football recruiting rankings.
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This seems exactly right to me. Without the sophistication and, well, money that goes into recruiting services for football/basketball softball recruiting can be less important than player development once student/athletes step on campus.

With pitchers there are probably some base components of the athlete that should be considered, including core power and pitch velocity, but it seems hard to analyze and compare.

For instance, I bet Michigan has had a significantly higher “ranked” recruiting class each and every year for the last 10 years (Probably by a significant margin) than our Gophers. But if you compare the last 7 years of on-the-field performance between these two teams, they have been fairly equal.
 


ClassOf98Gopher said:
This seems exactly right to me. Without the sophistication and, well, money that goes into recruiting services for football/basketball softball recruiting can be less important than player development once student/athletes step on campus.

With pitchers there are probably some base components of the athlete that should be considered, including core power and pitch velocity, but it seems hard to analyze and compare.

For instance, I bet Michigan has had a significantly higher “ranked” recruiting class each and every year for the last 10 years (Probably by a significant margin) than our Gophers. But if you compare the last 7 years of on-the-field performance between these two teams, they have been fairly equal.
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Add Northwestern to the higher "ranked" classes as well ("ranked" in terms of public profile, not necessarily talent). The Chicago area has become a strong PGF market and has some nationally high profile teams which helps those athletes get ranked.
 

Just my (perhaps knee-jerk) reaction, but I agree with Panthadad2's comment about "public profile." It seems to me some BIG programs in all sports get way more publicity than would seem earned. Michigan & Wisconsin are the 2 perceived favorites I have in mind. In football MI loses almost every year to OSU, but I regularly sense more publicity for the losers than the winners in that game. In almost all sports, I sense WI is the TV Network darlings no matter whom they're up against.
MI softball gets lots of credit based on past prominence. In very recent years they haven't been as strong as previously, but are treated in rankings & media as if they were still at the top. In 2019 MI was pretty much given the BIG softball season title by playing a weak schedule & avoiding NW & MN. Maybe the other BIG programs need to beef up their publicity efforts? (If I'm wrong, let me know.)
 

Panthadad2 said:
Add Northwestern to the higher "ranked" classes as well ("ranked" in terms of public profile, not necessarily talent). The Chicago area has become a strong PGF market and has some nationally high profile teams which helps those athletes get ranked.
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My daughter plays in this area (14u), and against the top teams. We do very well. As they get older it will be interesting which girls we see get offers and from where.
 

Just stumbled across another CA kid that committed to the Gophers - Eliana Gottlieb from Newport Harbor. As far as I can tell, she remains committed to MN. As an aside, I noticed that she and many other Gopher softballers are followed by Katie Richardson.
 

Gopher68 said:
Just stumbled across another CA kid that committed to the Gophers - from Newport Harbor. As far as I can tell, she remains committed to MN. As an aside, I noticed that she and many other Gopher softballers are followed by Katie Richardson.
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Gopher68, this is helpful information, as you are always able to provide. I actually stumbled across a picture of her in a gopher shirt some time ago alongside a fellow recruit but was unable to trace that photo to a name. I didn’t know who it was. Eliana Gottlieb is that person and then settles that mystery for me. She seems like an excellent student/athlete for the University of Minnesota.
 

She committed awhile back, correct? I feel like I've heard her name before...
 



Gopher68 said:
Catching up on another 2021 commit from a while back - Brynn Hostettler, a pitcher from Northfield.
www.southernminn.com

Hostettler commits to Gophers, will be 1st Division I softball player from Northfield

During what was already an emotional day, Brynn Hostettler finalized a decision on where she planned to attend college.
www.southernminn.com www.southernminn.com
It seems as though we are going have a lot of pitchers to work with. That is a good thing
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I honestly think depth is going to be very important for continued Goppher success in a post Moulton/Groenewagen/Fiser era. We can’t expect to have premier number one starters that can pitch 200-300 innings a year every single year.

Pitching depth is the smart play for the Gophers to work with pitchers that may not be able to keep up super high performance over large numbers of innings in a game/season. And, who knows, maybe another Moulton/Groenewagen/Fiser Will emerge fairly soon. Ya never know.
 


New 2022 recruit Addison Leschber 1B/OF from Thrall, Texas.
 
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