Roncalli junior Keagan Rothrock was named Gatorade’s National Player of the Year in softball.
Daily Journal file photo
When you’ve had a scholarship to the University of Florida in pocket since you were 12 years old, there are only so many stars left for you to shoot for.
For Keagan Rothrock, one individual milestone has stood out since the moment she started playing high school softball — and now, she’s reached it.
The Whiteland native, now a junior pitcher at Roncalli, was officially named the Gatorade National Player of the Year on Friday morning.
”It’s been one of my goals for a really long time; it was one of my goals last year,” Rothrock said. “It’s just a really good feeling to know that all the hard work that I’ve put in has paid off for me.”
Rothrock, who earned Gatorade honors for the state of Indiana as a sophomore after leading the Royals to a Class 4A state championship, has delivered quite the encore performance in 2022. She’s been her typical dominating self in the pitching circle, going 27-0 with a 0.73 earned-run average and 366 strikeouts agianst just 17 walks, but she’s also leveled up at the plate, hitting a team-best .529 with 14 home runs and 54 runs batted in after batting .442 with three round-trippers and 20 RBIs a year ago.
That increased power, Rothrock says, can be attributed to her training regimen this past offseason. She focused more intently on eating right and working hard in the weight room, and those efforts have not only boosted her slugging numbers throughout the season but also helped her stamina from a pitching standpoint.
“Upping my strength overall has really helped,” Rothrock said. “This season, I feel like I’m throwing better than I was at this point last year. Last year at this time, I felt like I was really fatigued, and I feel like I could keep going this year.”
It’s been more noticeable in the second half of the season. Over her last 96 innings pitched, Rothrock has posted a 0.29 ERA and whiffed 219 batters.
She’s proved particularly resilient when it matters most. In 12 career postseason starts, Rothrock has allowed just 38 hitters to reach base. In those situations, she’s been a rally-killer, retiring the next hitter in 34 of those 38 instances. Twenty of those 38 hitters struck out.
Though she’s been a stone-cold killer throughout her playing career, Rothrock notes that she and her Roncalli teammates perform better when they play loose and tune out the pressure. That’s not necessarily easy to do when you’re one of the most ballyhooed softball players in high school history and your team is ranked No. 1 in the country by MaxPreps, but Rothrock believes that the Royals have been more naturally chill this season than they were during their first title run a year ago.
They’re trying to treat tonight’s Class 4A title game at Purdue’s Bittinger Stadium just like any other day on the diamond.
“We’re definitely approaching it as business as usual, but we’re also going to go in and we’re going to have fun,” Rothrock said. “I feel like if we don’t have fun and we just go in all seriousness, it’s going to be really hard to play our game. I feel like our team is one where when we have fun, we play well. We’re going in there to get it done, but we’re also going in there to have the time of our lives as well.”
If Rothrock can claim a second state championship and the title of best player in the nation all in the same week, that’ll be about as time-of-our-lives as it gets.
