Wolverton Thriving At Plate, In Circle as Howell Aims High
By
Tim Robinson
Special for MHSAA.com
May 18, 2021
HOWELL — Avrey Wolverton is quietly having another outstanding season for the Howell softball team.
As a pitcher, she has 261 strikeouts in 114 innings, with two 20-strikeout games and another with 19 strikeouts. The latter was a perfect game, one of two no-hitters this season. She has a 19-1 record in 22 appearances.
At the plate, she’s hitting .435, with eight homers and 40 RBI for the Howell softball team through May 16. She plays first base when not in the circle.
With a month to go in the season, Wolverton, Howell coach Ron Pezzoni, and her teammates say she hasn’t gotten hot at the plate yet.
“That’s the scary part,” Pezzoni says. “She’ll get hot. I haven’t felt like she’s gotten into one of those grooves. She’s strong and hits the ball hard, but she hasn’t gotten into one of those streaks where you can’t get her out. I’m looking forward to it. Hopefully, she’s saving it for June.”
Wolverton is one of several key players on a Howell team looking to get back to the Division 1 Final this spring. The Highlanders (26-4-1) got there in 2019, but lost to Warren Regina 3-2 in eight innings.
Wolverton hit 17 home runs that season, earning her first-team all-state honors for the second year in a row. Pezzoni has no doubt she’ll get a third all-state nod this year, too.
“We’ve got one of the best hitters and pitchers in the state in the same person,” he said.
Wolverton’s most recent 20-strikeout game came on a cool and cloudy day at Canton in a 12-0 victory. Canton managed only one hit, in the top of the seventh inning, before Wolverton struck out the side to end the game.
Catcher Meghan Farren had an inkling something special was going to happen during warmups.
“You can tell if she’ll be on or off,” Farren said. “You can tell by the spin of the ball, and sometimes it comes in hotter than others.”
Wolverton was Howell’s second pitcher in 2019 behind Molly Carney, who now pitches at Notre Dame.
“I’m just pitching more and able to accomplish more,” Wolverton said of her success this spring.
“She moves the ball around really well inside and outside,” Farren said. “She works the ball well on both corners, and she knows how to bring it up and down.”
And Wolverton rarely misses her spots.
“She does miss sometimes,” Farren said, “and we laugh about it, and she says ‘My bad.’ It’s good.”
That pinpoint accuracy has kept hitters guessing this season. She’s held opposing hitters to a .145 average.
“I see the looks in hitters’ eyes, where they don’t know how they missed a pitch,” Pezzoni said. “I don’t know how they missed it, but they just keep missing them. She gets so many swings and misses.”
Wolverton accomplished what she did May 10 despite not getting a lot of sleep the night before.
That performance came after a late night coming home from Greenville, S.C., where she was visiting Furman University for the weekend. She got home around midnight and got up early to go to school, then pitched.
“I thought she might be a wreck, or tired,” Pezzoni said.
Wolverton plans to major in psychology at Furman.
“I’ve always been interested in what causes people to act the way they do,” she said.
In the meantime, she plans to write a successful final chapter to her high school career in a sport she’s been playing since age 8. She’s been pitching since she was 11.
“I saw everyone else doing it, and I thought it was cool so I wanted to try it,” Wolverton said.
She is mostly a quiet leader for the Highlanders.
“She doesn’t say a whole lot,” Pezzoni said. “Just takes care of her business, and that’s the kind of leader I like. You see some try to be (vocal) leaders, but to me it’s like, take care of your business (on the field) and people will follow you.”
All the way, the Highlanders hope, back to East Lansing.
PHOTOS: (Top) Howell’s Avrey Wolverton steps into a pitch this spring against Canton. (Middle) Wolverton makes her move toward the plate during her 20-strikeout performance. (Photos by Tim Robinson.)
Richmond Finds Stride, Brings Championship End to 2021
By
Jason Schmitt
Special for MHSAA.com
June 19, 2021
EAST LANSING — Richmond senior Makayla Revord did what she’s been taught since first lacing up the cleats as a young ball player.
Keep your head down and run hard.
So when she blooped a double down the right field line during the sixth inning of her team’s Division 3 Final against Buchanan on Saturday, she missed all the exciting action.
“I saw the ball land, and I kept going. I didn’t look at anybody else running. I just wanted to keep going to get more runs,” said Revord, whose hit drove in what turned out to be the game-winning run in her team’s 2-1 victory over the Bucks. “When I popped up (at second base), I had no worries anymore. I knew that we had this.”
Indeed they did. The Blue Devils scored twice in that sixth inning to rally from a run down and capture the second Finals championship in school history. The first came back in 2016 — also under current head coach Howard Stuart.
Richmond struggled against Buchanan starting pitcher Sophia Lozmack for the better part of six innings. The senior allowed just four hits while striking out six through five innings.
“She’s a great pitcher. You can’t take that away from her,” said Revord, speaking of Lozmack. “She’s got a great rise ball. She hits outside corners like nobody’s business. We don’t see a lot of that, so it took us a minute to catch up to that.”
Eventually, the Blue Devils did catch up in the sixth. Sophomore Piper Clark started things off with a one-out double and moved over to third on a single by junior Lauren Creon. Senior Jaelyn Amhdar then singled down the left field line, scoring Clark and tying the game up at 1-1. One out later, Revord came up with the eventual game-winner.
“The first half of the game, we were scared to death, which is not like us at all,” Stuart said. “(Revord) was shaking, she made two errors. It just wasn’t us. Finally, we got our act together and said, ‘Hey, we’re Richmond. Let’s do something.’”
Buchanan scored the first run of the game in the bottom of the second inning. Freshman first baseman Hailee Kara took a 1-2 pitch deep to right, clearing the fence while hitting the fair pole to give her team an early 1-0 lead. But from that point on, hits were hard to come by for the Bucks.
Richmond senior Shea VanScoter locked things down, retiring eight of the next nine Buchanan batters and 10 of the last 11 she faced. She had a complete game, allowing just one run on three hits while collecting nine strikeouts.
“She stymied us for seven innings, and that hasn’t really happened all year,” said Buchanan head coach Rachel Carlson, whose team finished with a 36-5 record. “So congratulations to her. She pitched great.”
Offensively, Clark led Richmond with three hits, including a double. She also had a stolen base.
“She’s a star. She’s a great sophomore who can run like the wind,” Stuart said. “And she’s a great pitcher too. She’s just a great kid.”
Stuart said Saturday’s win was a great way to cap off a season that may not have started off exactly the way he had hoped. It took a few weeks for the Blue Devils to get things going.
“The first week, I was like, ‘We’re terrible.’ We were making six errors a game. We were pathetic,” Stuart said. “All of a sudden we went from a fielding percentage of .700 to a fielding percentage of .900, which is just huge. I felt like in the middle of the season we had a really good team. We didn’t show it that first week, but we started getting better, and better and better.”
Buchanan was making its first appearance in an MHSAA Final game. The Bucks were coming off a 9-4 win over Standish-Sterling in Friday’s Semifinal. Carlson said she couldn’t be any more proud of the way her team competed this season.
“They made a commitment to play as a team and as a unit. That’s what I’m most proud of today,” said the fourth-year head coach. “They cheered each other on all day. They never stopped. That is a success in itself.”
PHOTOS: (Top) Richmond's Olivia Theut pulls in a fly ball during the Division 3 championship game Saturday evening. (Middle) The Blue Devils’ Piper Clark (10) shows some excitement after reaching second base.