Countdown to opening day: The infielders

Bethany Olea has been a part of history in her first two years as a member of the Montana softball team.

She had the first putout in program history when she stepped on third in the top of the first inning against New Mexico State on Feb. 5, 2015, in Las Cruces to start a 5-3 double play, which also was a first. In the bottom of that inning she had the first hit in program history when she doubled to left center.

And last May she was involved in the most exciting moment to date.

With Montana trailing Big Sky Conference leader Weber State 4-3 in the second game of a doubleheader, Olea came to bat in the bottom of the seventh with two out and runners on first and second, and the Grizzlies needing a win to keep their hopes of a Big Sky championship alive.

All Olea did was do what she had been doing all season: deliver another frozen rope.

She doubled to right center, which scored Madeline Merritt to tie it, then Delene Colburn to win it. Begin: bedlam. The play's lasting images are of coach Jamie Pinkerton, decorum be damned, just this once, windmilling the runners home, then dancing in behind them to join the celebration at home plate.

Montana would fall the next day, 9-7, but by sweeping the opening-day doubleheader against the team that would win the following week's Big Sky tournament and advance to the NCAAs, the Grizzlies became the only team all season to win a series against the Wildcats.

The Grizzlies had arrived, and faster than anybody would have dreamt was possible.

Olea was as big a part of it as anybody. She batted a team-best .408 and earned first-team All-Big Sky honors, hitting in the No. 5 spot for a lineup that scored a league-leading 322 runs.

Which goes to prove that Division I softball players don't need to be playing the game from the day they can walk.

Olea was born and raised in Yuma, Ariz., the third of three daughters of Joel and Theresa. The Oleas loved softball and were 100 percent supportive of all their daughters, but when Bethany came along, the girls outnumbered the parents, who could only be at so many fields at once.

So while Ariel and Isabella got a head start playing tee-ball, then moving up to the machine-pitch Teeny Bopper league, Bethany had to wait until the age of 8 to begin playing, when she could join her sister's team. By then it was fast pitch. No tees. No machines pumping out perfect strike after perfect strike.

"Plus my parents didn't like sitting there watching tee-ball," Olea says. "So they just waited until I was old enough to play regular fast pitch."

The delay hardly held Olea back. She played four years of shortstop at Cibola High and short or third base for her travel team. After graduation she enrolled at Arizona Western, a junior college in Yuma.

She batted .464 in her one season for the Lady Matadors as Arizona Western went 49-9 and finished the season with a No. 2 national ranking. Along the way, she caught the eye of Pinkerton.

"I had never heard about Montana, but Coach Pink was at one of my tournaments. I emailed him, and we kept in touch," says Olea. "My coach expected me to be there for two years, but she said she would let me go if that's what I wanted to do. She was really supportive."

Olea and winter, at least the Montana version of it, go together like Olea and wasted at-bats. You know they're out there, lurking, so they are best avoided at all costs. Thankfully for everyone involved, Olea made her recruiting visit in the summer after her freshman year at Arizona Western.

"Winter here is a little much for me," she admits, "but in the summer it was beautiful. I liked the campus. I'd been to Arizona State, where it's really big and spread out. This is a big university, but you can walk wherever you want to go.

"I liked the vibe here. I never thought I'd end up here, but it worked out that way."

Olea was a bit of an oddity on Pinkerton's first team, which had a roster dominated by 15 freshmen. She was a part of that group, newcomers all, but still one year ahead.

That initial freshman class, juniors now, is down to 11. They have two seasons still to go. The clock is ticking down more quickly for Olea. "It's kind of starting to hit me that this is it," she says.

That first year she hit mostly in the No. 5 spot, finishing with a .300 batting average. Just fine for most in their first year playing Division I softball, mostly meh for Olea.

"It wasn't bad, but I didn't think it was my best. I knew I could do better. Just like it was for everybody, that first year was a learning process with the new program," she says. "There is an adjustment period, and you have to be strong enough to get through that."

Last year, a breakthrough. She batted .408, one of just three players in the Big Sky to hit better than .400. She had 16 multiple-hit games and for one lengthy stretch reached base 32 consecutive games.

She was at her best once the Big Sky portion of the schedule arrived. In 21 league games, she hit .432 and had a team-leading .511 on-base percentage. Opposing pitchers were reportedly resorting to voodoo dolls in the dugout as a last resort.

"The difference between the first year and last year, I think she was more relaxed and more patient at the plate," says Pinkerton. "She took pitches and did a good job of getting ahead in the count and getting pitches she could drive. She knew her zone and knew what she wanted."

The team's lone senior, Olea is part of the team's most experienced position group.

Olea hasn't sat out a game in her career and started all 56 at third base last spring. Colburn has started all but one game at shortstop the first two years of the program, junior Gabby Martinez has 96 starts at second, and junior Ashlyn Lyons has mostly held down first base.

"Obviously I'm real happy and comfortable with our experience level there," says Pinkerton. "We've been pretty consistent with who's played in the infield.

"The advantage of having everyone in the same class, except Beth, is that they know where they are going to be and know each other's range. The disadvantage is trying to replace an experienced group mostly at one time in a couple of years."

For as much as Pinkerton would love to live in the moment with this group, college coaches are not allowed that luxury. They always need to be forward-thinking. Who do we lose this year? How about next year? Who do we have commitments from? Do we need to keep looking? Who else is out there?

Olea has experience dating back to high school -- she was a pitcher until she was an eighth grader -- at both positions on the left side of the infield, but it's at third base where she is happiest.

Not that other positions don't have to be engaged and on their toes for every pitch, but they don't call it the hot corner for nothing. Playing even with the bag, 60 feet from home plate, third basemen have to be ready for a full range of options, from bunt to hissing line drive off a right-hander's bat.

"I love it because you're always involved," she says. "The outfield is too out there for me. I like to be involved in every pitch, and I like the fast reactions at third base. Shortstop is more side-to-side movement. I feel like I'm better with fast reactions."

To Olea's left is Colburn, which gives Pinkerton last year's All-Big Sky third baseman and the player who should be the league's top shortstop this year now that 2016 Big Sky Player of the Year Aubrey Whitmer has graduated from Weber State. Colburn was voted second-team behind Whitmer last spring.

Colburn batted .383 as a freshman, with a .727 slugging percentage. She hit .344 last spring with a team-leading 63 runs batted in. Defensively she cut her errors in half from her freshman year to her sophomore season.

And she is back to full health after missing most of the fall with a broken toe. Pinkerton says, "She probably wouldn't want you to write how it happened," which was interpreted to mean, "Please, please, please write how it happened." She tripped over a dog and fell down the stairs.

"Luckily it healed up nicely, and she only had to miss a portion of the fall," he says. "I'm looking for another good year out of her. She's a prolific hitter in what should be a formidable middle of the lineup for us."

While she has been a mainstay at short the first two years of her career, Colburn could be moved around as necessary.

And there are other pieces Pinkerton can employ. With Colburn sidelined in the fall, sophomore Sydney Stites, voted first-team All-Big Sky last season as an outfielder, played short. Junior Tori Lettus also can play multiple infield positions.

While the infield lineup -- Lyons, Martinez, Olea, Colburn -- appears to be etched in stone, it doesn't have to be. And probably shouldn't be, because you never know when another dog is going to show up underfoot near a steep staircase.

"What's nice about Del is that she is versatile enough that she can play other positions as well," says Pinkerton. "You put Del, Sydney and Tori in there, and they are good pieces to the puzzle and good moving parts if anyone were to go down. We have some nice versatility in the infield.

"Depth-wise and experience-wise, I probably feel more comfortable with the infield than any of the other positions."

On the right side of the infield is Martinez. At 4-foot-11 (in spikes), she could be easy to disregard, but she makes it impossible to do so. Against the odds she became a Division I softball player. Against even greater odds, she's been starting since the program's very first game.

She began her career batting leadoff. She hit in the No. 9 spot last year. A pest for opposing teams when she gets on base, Martinez has 31 steals in 34 attempts in her career.

She is also a vacuum at second base. She had just two errors last year for a sparkling .989 fielding percentage.

"Gabi is small in size but big in stature," says Pinkerton. "She has a desire to be a role model for the player everyone says is too small. When I was recruiting her, I thought the same thing, but she was always on base and always doing the little things right.

"She is a good, hard-nosed defensive player who covers a lot of ground, and she anchors the bottom of the lineup. She's one of the pistons in the engine. She keeps things going."

Of course playing with a sub-five-foot second baseman did come with a steep learning curve for her teammates. Throwing to second for a force out or to start a double play required a change in learned behavior.

"Throwing to Gabi is nothing now. It's just like throwing to everybody else," says Olea. "But I think we have all sent some throws over her head."

Lyons is the infield's returning starter who is easiest to overlook, but that's our fault, not hers. After missing the season's first 15 games last year, she started the final 41, hitting .300 in the No. 6 and 7 spots in the lineup.

All but one of her hits last year were singles, which keeps the offense rolling but keeps her off the appreciation radar of most fans, as does her steady play at first base, where she does the best thing a first baseman can do: go unnoticed because she makes every play look routine.

"Ashlyn just goes about her business and puts up quiet numbers," says Pinkerton. "She had a 14-game hitting streak last season, and it's probably the quietest school record we have. And she is an excellent defender. She just gets the job done."

She will be more visible this season if the fall was any indication. She batted in the No. 2 spot, where Stites was so successful last year, behind junior MaKenna McGill and ahead of -- in an order yet to be determined -- Stites, Colburn and Olea.

If that's the case, Lyons should easily surpass the 17 runs she combined to score as a freshman and sophomore. Imagine: McGill gets on base at a high rate, Lyons keeps smoothly stroking singles (and maybe her first career home run?), and Stites, Colburn and Olea are due up. Yes, please.

"She really took to the new spot in fall," says Pinkerton of Lyons' move up the lineup. "So early on we'll probably move Syd down into the 3-4-5 area, with Colburn and Olea. I'm not quite sure how it will look, but I want to get the dependability of Ashlyn's bat into the two slot."

Stites started the first 15 games last season at first base in place of Lyons before moving to right field for the rest of the year. In the fall she played shortstop for Colburn.

Lettus is just as versatile but does it more on a game-by-game basis, as needs arise.

"Every successful team has to have a player like Tori," says Pinkerton. "(Not being a regular starter) is not always a position a player wants to be in, and as a coach I wouldn't want her if she didn't want to be a starter.

"Tori is as big a team player as there is on the team. She's open to wherever we stick her that particular day. She's one of those valuable pieces to a ball club."

Lettus played in 32 of 56 games last spring, getting 17 starts, mostly at DP. But when the time came for her to produce in an important Big Sky home series last season, she delivered.

With Martinez home in California for Montana's home games against Portland State in April, Lettus, who had had just 16 at-bats to that point, got the start at second base.

All she did was go 5 for 7 in the three games, with a pair of doubles. She drove in a run and scored three times to earn Big Sky Player of the Week honors after the Grizzlies finished off a sweep of the Vikings.

But the next weekend, with Montana at Southern Utah, Martinez was back at second. Lettus was in the dugout, waiting for her next opportunity.

"Tori's filled that role well and admirably," says Pinkerton, "and I haven't had very many players in my career who have done that. She's prepared for any situation she could possibly go into. It's a tough position, but it's invaluable."

And so season No. 3 for the Montana softball team is nearly upon us, now just one week away from games in Cedar Falls, Iowa. First up: Nebraska-Omaha and South Dakota State on Friday, followed by games against Drake, Northern Iowa and Toledo.

It's the start of a long season that will pass quickly. Too quickly for the team's lone senior and signal that for as much as we'd love to keep this team and its original incoming class together forever, the program will move forward.

Pinkerton has had Senior Days for other players the last two years, but now it's starting to hit a sensitive spot much deeper, where stronger emotions get triggered.

"With Bethany it's a little different, because she kind of came in with that freshman bunch," says Pinkerton. "She is going to be the first kid to graduate who's been here an extended amount of time.

"It's going to hit home that these kids are growing up and graduating. Bethany is kind of the warning shot that this first bunch is moving through the system and will be getting their degrees."

As Jennifer Egan writes, "Sure, everything is ending, but not yet." Fifty-six games on the schedule. A 0-0 record. A team full of expectations awaits the first pitch.

And Bethany Olea wants to be a part of even more history.

University of Montana Athletics

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Bethany Olea

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