I’ve personally never seen 70 mph live and in person before. I could square it up though!
I have met Larry a few times. Never met his daughter. I used to coach for the Bandits. Larry is a pitching instructor about 1.5 hours west of me, he had a pitcher he wanted to get on the Bandits team that I was coaching. The girl was a good pitcher but she was a year younger than my team. I got the girl on the younger team the following year. From my understanding Larry was a mens fastpitch pitcher back in the day.First of all, Merry Christmas, y’all!
I know! I would stand and watch her at hs games and knew she threw very hard but wasn’t sure about what I was seeing. I had never seen anything to compare it to. She actually played for the Bandits, went to Mizzou and played for Earlywine for one year and then Ohio State. Left college after that.
Turns out, I was wrong about her being an 8th grader. She was in 7th grade when this happened!
Here is a link to an article about her from one of the chief list makers:
From the article:
“There is no NCAA rule to prohibit a college coach from offering an athlete a scholarship before the coach is allowed to have off-campus contact or initiate phone contact with a recruit. There’s also no rule preventing player-initiated phone calls to a college coach before coaches are allowed to call prospects. Prospects of any age can talk to coaches while on an unofficial visit as long as it’s not during a recruiting dead period.
Missouri Coach Ehren Earleywine said a seventh-grader took an unofficial visit to MU this spring. Missouri was the fifth school she visited, he said, and she had three scholarship offers.
“Seventh-graders are visiting at a pretty steady pace,” Earleywine said.
College coaches usually establish contact with a recruit with help from a travel-ball or high school coach. They might attend a prospect’s game and pass word to the coach that they would like to talk to that player if she would call them.
That’s how the process worked with Rice. Earleywine watched her play a game last October and arranged through her coach for Rice to call him. On Dec. 14, with MU’s coaches watching, Rice hit 70 mph — the equivalent of throwing 98 in baseball — on the radar gun during a prospect camp Missouri hosted. Earleywine offered her a full scholarship, Rice said. She accepted.
“It’s really difficult for families and kids to make those decisions that early,” said Larry Rice, Lauren’s father. … “If they don’t take those opportunities when they’re presented, I think a lot of parents, along with some of the kids, feel that they’re going to lose out.”
Larry Rice said he’s comfortable with his daughter committing to Missouri when she did. He views it as a commitment to attend and graduate from college while playing softball at a high-level program, all of which he’s in favor of his daughter doing.
“It wasn’t a death sentence,” he said. “We tried to keep it as positive as we can.”
Bold added to highlight a rather interesting comment…
I would bet that would be the case with the top 100 or more.
It’s just numbers there are a gazillion 12u pitchers. You figure half of them are above average. Of that half there will be a lot of them that don’t progress much past 12u, those are the ones the smaller slower harder working girls will catch. Of the ones that are left that haven’t peaked and continue to work hard and probably grow a little more this is the group they come from.So how does that jive with this:
