Karlie McKenzie walked off the field as a freshman wearing a Kaskaskia College uniform in the National Junior Collegiate Athletic Association Softball Championships.
She had just helped Kaskaskia upset 3-seed Wallace State thanks to McKenzie’s seven scoreless innings.
McKenzie remembers that game, but also what happened after the game.
“Immediately after that game I remember we went out to lunch, we went to Jersey Mike’s, and I got a message on that same recruiting app FieldLevel from Tara Archibald,” McKenzie said.
Archibald was the current head coach at Eastern Illinois. McKenzie said she had no plans to leave her junior college until she started talking with Archibald.
“I hadn’t really even been a thought in my mind to leave, but [Archibald] was really persistent and had a really good plan for me, and I just trusted her and I went with it,” McKenzie said.
That season, McKenzie finished with 47 appearances which led the nation and was 12th in the nation in wins with 23. She also had a 2.23 ERA and finished third in strikeouts with 264.
McKenzie has now been at Eastern for the past two years and is currently playing in her senior season. However, her season at junior college was not all good.
McKenzie said that it started out rough and that she needed to adjust pretty quickly.
She said that early on she had to learn that to compete at college, you have to play for your team and not just for yourself. That’s unlike softball at the travel and high school levels.
“I remember my very first college tournament was in Mississippi,” McKenzie said. “It was in February and it was freezing cold and raining and it was awful. We went like 0-5. I did not pitch well at all.”
She said that after that moment, she had to have a short memory and regroup, which she did. She finished the year strong which led her to join Eastern.
At EIU, she didn’t play much for her first year, with only 53 innings pitched. Last year, she more than doubled that with 125 innings pitched. She finished the year on the Ohio Valley Conference first team and OVC tournament MVP.
However, she didn’t end up playing for the coach who recruited her. Instead, Dan and Kristi Paulson became her new coaches.
McKenzie said it was hard initially.
“It’s mentally kind of tough when you know that your coach did not recruit you,” McKenzie said. “But, the Paulsons have never ever made us feel that way, they’ve never said anything that would make us even think that.”
Dan Paulson echoed a similar sentiment and said that they would have recruited her if given the chance.
“They don’t come any better than Karly,” Paulson said.
One of the top pitchers on the team, Olivia Price, graduated two years ago, and McKenize said that it left a hole in the rotation. McKenzie Oslanzi was the number one pitcher last year, but that only covered one or maybe two games in a series.
“You can’t just go two for three every weekend because that could lead you to only a second or third seed,” McKenzie said. “I just felt the need to step up for my team, and I honestly feel like I was able to pitch without so much pressure because I knew my team had my back, McKenzie [Oslanzi] had my back, my coaches had my back.”
Before that year, she had the chance to pitch in a summer league. She was on the Madison Nightmares in the Northwoods Summer league.
“It was really nice to be able to go out and throw a full game in one of those games to just know that I can go a full seven and that I’m capable of it,” McKenzie said. “I really took that into my junior year, and it just gave me a new level of confidence coming into that year.”
This past summer, she was the league’s pitcher of the year, and her team won the league in the playoffs.
This season, however, has been a slow start. She recorded seven losses before she picked up her first win. Heading into Ohio Valley Conference play, she was sitting at a 9.19 ERA. It has since lowered to 7.74.
Catcher Lexie Griffin said that half the battle of pitching is the mental side of things and pushing through when things get tough. McKenzie knows about that from her time at Kaskaskia, but also from high school.
At Monona High School in Wisconsin her sophomore season was shut down by the COVID-19 Pandemic. She said that the only workouts she could do were at-home runs and just throwing the ball with her dad.
She continued playing in her junior and senior seasons, but as the only pitcher. She said at times it could be difficult, as she had no one to compare herself to.
“I think you just really have to compete with yourself and that was my biggest thing going from my junior year to my senior year was just wanting to do better than I did the year before and just pushing myself,” McKenzie said.
She did get through all of that and now faces the challenge of getting through this rough start.
“I think I’ve just been putting too much pressure on myself,” McKenzie said. “We obviously played a pretty rough [non-conference schedule], and I think just the confidence is a little bit low, but getting into conference, I’m hopeful that things will start turning up.
Paulson said he is not worried about McKenzie because of how tough the non-conference slate was.
“Our batting averages were down, our on-base percentages were down, our pitchers’ numbers were down,” Paulson said. “We played seven of those games against opponents that are ranked or have been ranked in the top 25.”
The coaching staff just wanted to challenge the team, and they are not worried about some of the bad stats that came out of it, Paulson said.
McKenzie has recorded two wins and no losses since the first seven games.
No matter how the season finishes, Paulson said that McKenzie has been a leader on the team and that he has had the luxury to coach her.
“She is one of the best human beings to be around to coach,” Paulson said.
Patrick Schmitz can be reached at 581-2812 or at [email protected].
