Softball is a mental game. Its 51-game regular season is taxing, even if it isn’t against some of the best teams in the country. The schedule is even more unforgiving if it’s like what Virginia Tech will face in 2025, a slate that includes 11 teams that qualified for the NCAA Tournament last year.
That’s why Hokies head coach Pete D’Amour is emphasizing mental toughness this spring. No. 18 Virginia Tech has the talent and depth to make a deep run, potentially to Oklahoma City for the Women’s College World Series, but fell short of the super regionals the last two seasons.
He hired Jason Kuhn, a former Navy SEAL and college baseball player, to meet with the team weekly as a sports performance coach.
“He came in and spoke to our players on a Friday night; it was two hours and the kids were on the edge of their seats,” D’Amour told Tech Sideline on Monday. “The next day, we did some boot camp; it wasn’t typical. Kids were gassed, but there was pressure, cheering on your teammates — all the things that I had looked to bring in. It was the perfect match for us.”
In his first meeting with the team, Kuhn had them describe what they want to change from last year into this season.
“The word we came up with was fight,” senior pitcher Emma Lemley said at media day on Tuesday. “We wanted to have more fight in us and not lay down at any point in the game, no point in the season — just keep fighting, no matter what’s happening.”
D’Amour said the players have complied with the new mentality.
“The mindset is different this year,” senior outfielder Cori McMillan said. “Last year, everyone always says everyone has to be bought in for it to happen, but there were still a couple strays that we felt weren’t all in with it. This year, every single person from the second they got here were like, ‘Oh, we want to win a World Series.’”
Fresh off of five consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances, the Hokies have the talent to make another run. They hit 115 home runs in 2024, along with a .342 team batting average, a .424 on-base percentage and a .633 slugging percentage — all program records. They also return a majority of their starters in McMillan, Bre Peck, Kylie Aldridge, Michelle Chatfield and Annika Rohs. This doesn’t even include Rachel Castine, who hit .526 with five home runs in nine games before missing the rest of the season with a broken wrist.
Tech graduated starters Emma Ritter, Addy Greene and Cameron Fagan in 2024, all of whom played in more than 54 games and hit over .373, combining for 38 home runs and 136 RBI. D’Amour replaced their bats with five freshmen — Nora Abromavage, Jordan Lynch, Jayden Jones, MJ Abernathy and Charlotte Moore — plus the cast of returners.
“It was good to come back and see that everyone was putting in work over the offseason,” McMillan said. “No one came back slow or out of shape, which is always good. Everyone came back hot. I’m looking forward to seeing how that plays out.”
Though Tech’s offense has been consistent throughout D’Amour’s tenure, its pitching has been a larger question mark. The Hokies bring back Lemley, sophomore Emma Mazzarone and junior Cassie Grizzard. They also added Indiana transfer Sophie Kleiman, who finished her sophomore season with a 14-5 record and 2.69 earned run average across 41 appearances.
“There were a lot of kids in the portal,” D’Amour said. “When Sophie came to visit, her No. 1 focus was getting better. She wasn’t coming in here demanding anything from us, she wasn’t demanding money. It was, ‘Hey, I want to get better and I think I can do that here.’ She fit in as well as anybody.”
The four arms with collegiate experience, plus freshmen Reagan Troy and Bree Carrico, will fill innings for the Hokies this season.
“Keep an eye on everybody from the pitching staff this year,” Lemley said. “I think we’ve all been pushing each other really hard to get better. It’s not six individual pitchers; we’ve all kind of been one unit.”
Mazzarone, a two-way player who D’Amour initially recruited as a hitter, is looking to improve upon her strong freshman campaign. In 25 appearances in the circle in 2024, she finished with a 9-3 record and 3.35 ERA, including a career-high nine strikeout performance in the team’s season-ending loss to Grand Canyon.
“Speaking as a batter that’s had to face her the past couple weeks, she’s definitely throwing it,” McMillan said. “There have been multiple days where I’ll stand behind the radar [gun] about to hit second or third, then I’ll turn around and go, ‘How fast is it?’ And the past three were 71 [mph]. … She’s very much around the zone right now. With Maz, you know there aren’t pitches you can let go by; she’s so dangerous and she’s gonna be so good.”
Mazzarone is one of two lefties in Tech’s bullpen, along with Grizzard. D’Amour noted the lack of an advantage for right-handed hitters against left-handed pitchers — unlike in baseball — which increases her ceiling.
“The key with Maz is [telling her] to just trust that you’re a beast,” D’Amour said. “You’re left-handed and you throw 70 miles-per-hour. … It’s hard to hit — especially left-handed. There are times in live [batting practice] when she’ll throw and our hitters will come back and say, ‘We cannot hit it.’ … For her, just to trust that she’s good enough and that she’s a beast is half the battle.”
With steps forward and an increased focus on mental toughness, Virginia Tech is in prime position to qualify for its sixth consecutive NCAA Tournament and extend its season deep into May and June.
“I think we’ve set our sights exactly where they should be,” Lemley said. “I don’t think it’s too high. I think everybody 100% believes that we can do everything that we have set our minds to.”