The Zeeland native is regarded as perhaps the best female softball pitcher ever.
She pitched Holland Christian High School to the Class B state championship in 1976 with a 22-0 record, and then played collegiately at Grand Valley State University, Texas Women’s University and California State at Chico winning the Broderick award as collegiate player of the year award three times and being named Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women (AIAW) All-American twice.
A 15-year career as a pitching star followed with the Raybestos Brakettes of Connecticut and USA Softball. The Brakettes were the premier women’s fast pitch softball team in the history of the sport. She was part of 11 Amateur Softball Association (ASA) national championship teams, four world championship teams, won a gold and bronze medal in the Pan American Games and was the ASA Pitcher of the Year four times. In 1981 she was the first softball player to win the James E. Sullivan Award as the top amateur athlete in the United States.
Her ASA statistics are among the best in history – 337-26 record (.928), an 0.15 career ERA, 2,683 innings pitched, 4,060 strikeouts, 42 perfect games, 79 no-hitters, 58 one-hitters and 265 shutouts.
She went into coaching and made several stops over 20 years, including being the head coach at Western Connecticut State, Yale University, Mississippi State and Oregon with over 500 coaching wins.
Her most notable appearance in the public eye came via the television program ABC’s Wide World of Sports. She was interviewed by baseball’s Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson, and then she struck him out three times in an exhibition at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse. Her fastball was once clocked at 95 miles per hour in just 43-feet from mound to plate.
She is also a member of the National Softball Hall of Fame and the Michigan Sports Hall of Fame.