Softball seniors bid adieu

Cami Sellers has been hit by a pitch 12 times in her college career. Probably remembers every single one of them and the pitcher who threw it. Probably still has some marks, lasting mementoes of the price she's paid for being a Division I athlete.

That doesn't include the number of balls she has fouled off her ankles and feet or the sharply hit batted balls to the infield she has blocked and knocked to the ground with something other than her glove.

Or the number of times she's stretched into a throw, maybe a little too far, from her spot at first base. Or short-hopped one into her body. Or been cleated by a baserunner.

And that doesn't include the practices, which far outnumber the 172 games she's competed in during her career. Or the years invested in softball prior to college. It all catches up to a ballplayer over time. Nobody plays this game forever, not at this level.

"It's hard. I'm getting old. My body is getting tired," says Sellers, one of four seniors on this year's Montana softball team, none of whom will be exercising their option for an extra year of eligibility brought on by the disruption known as COVID.

Four players, each with her own reasons. Sellers? She's just worn out, mentally as much as physically.

Tristin Achenbach is going to move to Indiana and pursue a master's degree in health care administration. Lexi Knauss will start working on a master's degree in public administration at Montana in the fall. Both are ready to ease into the more traditional student way of life.

Jessica McAlister? She's partly broken but mostly it's about moving on with things. She's getting married this summer and starting a new job, a big-girl job as she describes it, after the softball season concludes.

Asked about it this week, if the option of coming back for one more season was tempting, all of them said the same thing. They wrestled with it. Went back and forth, leaning one way one day, the other the next. "It was a really, really hard decision" was repeated four times.

It's a wonderful reflection of Melanie Meuchel's program. Players don't want to leave but they also are fully prepared to do so.

"That's our job, to give them the best experience possible on the softball field while they are receiving their degree," said the coach.

"They are ready to move on, and that's what they are supposed to do. Would we want them to stay? Heck yeah. But we're also proud of what they have accomplished and what they're doing."

For Achenbach, becoming a Grizzly felt preordained. She began dominating high school players across the state just as Montana was emerging as a first-year program.

It's been a wonderful marriage. She threw a no-hitter as a freshman, struck out a Big Sky Conference-record 16 batters in a game as a sophomore.

She is the program leader in career wins, with 31, and should become the leader in strikeouts as well, probably at next week's Big Sky tournament in Ogden, Utah.

"It was everything I thought it would be and more. I've gained so many friends and been around so many amazing role models and coaches that I don't think I could have gotten anywhere else, so I'm super grateful," she said.

She graduated with a degree in health and human performance on Saturday. "I'm ready to start the rest of my life," she said. "But it was a hard decision, one I thought about for quite a while."

McAlister looked like the outlier when this year's senior class signed in November 2016. There were two signees from Montana, one from Idaho and then McAlister, from Albuquerque, N.M.

But she had deep family ties to the state. And when it came to going to college, it was Montana or nothing.

"I remember being in high school and saying, 'If I don't play softball at the University of Montana, then I'm not playing in college,'" she says. "I only wanted to play here. I stand by that decision."

So she cold-called then Griz coach Jamie Pinkerton, said her piece and crossed her fingers.

"It was nerve-racking," McAlister said. "But I was confident in my decision about wanting to come here. If they didn't want me to play softball, then I wanted to go to the University of Montana as a student.

"There was so much more to this school and Missoula to me than just softball, but softball has been the biggest blessing. It was the best decision I've ever made. I wouldn't trade any of it for anything."

She became the team's full-time starter at third base as a freshman, was the team's primary catcher as a sophomore. She had shoulder surgery after her COVID-shortened junior season, which played into her decision-making about the future.

She is now limited to hitting only and would be for the rest of her career. Not that there's anything wrong with that side of her game. She is batting .356 this season, third on the team, as a pinch hitter and designated player.

"It's a hard pill to swallow that I can't play defense. I'm okay with how things played out this year. I've just been making the most of it," she said. "Another year would have been difficult."

She arrived on campus expecting to follow the family tradition and become an accountant. That lasted one semester. "It was like learning a new language," she says. She looked within the business school, discovered management information systems and was hooked after one class.

She turned that into a job with G5, a real-estate marketing company founded in 2005 in Bend, Ore. Part of the appeal is that she'll get to remain in Missoula and work remotely, fitting for the family trailblazer.

"My parents and my brother and his wife live here now. We're trying to recruit my other brother and his wife and three kids. They live in Phoenix. I think we've almost got them," she says.

Batting 1.000 can be tough to pull off. There is bound to be a swing and a miss somewhere along the way.

"My sister and husband and baby boy are in Texas. I don't know how successful we'll be with that one. My brother-in-law grew up in Texas and loves Texas, and now my sister loves Texas, so that's tough."

Knauss had mid-career shoulder surgery as well for a torn labrum. She had two anchors and eight sutures put in around the socket.

"I've been playing softball since I was three years old. It just kind of wore out," she says. "I compare softball to a fulltime job. It's an all-day thing. I don't think people realize how much goes into it. But it's the best job I've had."

The second-baseman's best offensive season came in 2019, when she was a sophomore. She batted .284 and had 18 extra-base hits.

Her favorite memory came during the shortened 2020 season, when Montana went to Fayetteville, Ark., and picked up the program's first-ever win over a ranked team, shutting out the Razorbacks 5-0.

That win just gets more and more impressive. Since the start of the 2020 season, Arkansas has gone 59-14 and last weekend clinched at least a share of its first-ever SEC championship.

In those 73 games, Arkansas has only been shut out three times, by Montana, Liberty and Alabama.

"That was a big one for a lot of us," said Knauss when asked of the things she'll remember from her days as a Griz. "Off the field, going to football games and hanging out on Saturdays with all our teammates. We do a lot of stuff together."

When the season is done, Knauss's playing career will be over as well. "It was a hard decision. It took me a while to decide. I'm just ready to move on and focus on the next step in my life, which would be a career. I'm really interested in working for the state or a city.

"I'm 100 percent positive it was the right decision. I've made the best friends here. I don't think I could ask for better teammates or a better softball family. I've had a great softball career."

Sellers, from Los Alamitos, Calif., was a latecomer. She played her first year at Boston College before transferring to Montana.

She was a dominant presence at the plate from her first season, when she batted .374, had 31 extra-base hits and scored 35 times. She batted .484 in 18 league games that season, one of the best weeks-long stretches of hitting in program history.

She'll end up playing less than three full seasons, but Sellers still will be in the top 10 in most career offensive statistical lists in program history.

She graduated on Saturday with a degree in psychology, with a minor in human and family development. Like McAlister and Knauss, she'll remain in Missoula to begin the next phase of her life.

"It was very tempting (to play one more year). I went back and forth for a long time. It was a really hard decision, but it was the right thing for my body and my mind," she says.

She is the only senior who expressed regrets. Not that she chose Montana or how her time as a Grizzly went but that she didn't get here sooner.

Montana was only in its third year when Sellers was a senior at Los Alamitos High, "so they weren't really on my radar," she says.

Madison Saacke, Griz alumna (2015-18), was a graduate of Los Alamitos High as well and a close friend of Sellers' older sister Rachel.

"I wish she would have come to me sooner," says Sellers. "This is the place I needed and wanted coming out of high school. I wish I would have found it sooner."

All were seniors in high school when Montana won its lone Big Sky Conference championship in May 2017. None mentioned this week that it is a goal still outstanding, though they'll get the chance to pursue it next week in Ogden.

With or without a title on their collective class resume, these Grizzlies have not only left a mark, they are destined for bigger and better things ahead, and isn't that what college is for, four years as launching pad?

"They are loyal, skilled and very smart individuals," said Meuchel. "They've really shown the way of what Griz Softball should be. They'll be great leaders in our world."

University of Montana Athletics

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Players Mentioned

Tristin Achenbach

Lexi Knauss

Jessica McAlister

Madison Saacke

Cami Sellers

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