This is not the Grace Haegele you remember

Softball is no place for a perfectionist.

Go on an 8-for-12 heater at the plate over a weekend series and those four missed opportunities will eat at a girl who's wired to pursue the unattainable. You're killing it! Yeah, but …

Even the sport's perfect game is far from it, hard-hit balls finding the defense's gloves often enough that every at-bat leads to an out within a window of innings.

That's the battle that Grace Haegele has been fighting against the sport – and against herself – since she first picked up a ball all those years ago, threw it toward the plate and decided she wanted to master not just the craft but bring that mindset to the circle, to a game itself that doesn't allow perfect.

She can achieve a 4.0 in her college courses, which she has every semester she's been at Montana, where hard work, dedication and sacrifice can translate into a report card full of A's, but there is no equivalent to be reached on the softball field.

It's just measured differently.

Did your team win? Then you did your job. But what if Montana wins 7-6 and she gave up three home runs and six earned runs? Or what if the Grizzlies lose 2-1 but she threw a one-hitter, the only two runs scored off her unearned, coming on a two-out defensive miscue?

How is a girl supposed to balance that, her need to chase individual brilliance in a team sport, where the ultimate objective is to have at least one more run than the other team at the end of the day? Do that and you're a winner. Everything that led to that is just the details. Can you accept that?

"(Head coach Stef Ewing and pitching coach Megan Casper) have told me, perfection doesn't make sense. It's not needed to win," says Haegele, who is entering her junior season at Montana and is the team's only pitcher with Division I experience.

"There is so much more besides the numbers, which is something I'm working to truly believe. I'm getting there. At the end of the day, a win is a win and I'm still trying to learn that. But I still have those perfectionist tendencies."

Growing up in Redmond, Wash., she could get away with it, her electric stuff enough to win the day almost every day when she was throwing against her peers, 12-year-old dominating 12-year-old.

The college game was a new reality, cold water to the face, a 4-16 record as a freshman with a 7.35 ERA. Last season, a marked improvement, going 7-10 with a 5.09 ERA.

Some college athletes would just ride it out the next two years, say this is who I am and put in the required work, nothing more, nothing ventured. This is the best I can do. Some, like Haegele, put their foot down and decide, you haven't seen me even close to my best. Just wait. You'll see.

"All athletes in college play because they love it," says Ewing, Montana's first-year coach. "Some of them decide to make changes and sacrifices that all of a sudden help them turn a corner.

"Understanding her college career, Grace decided to train and completely change what she was doing. She made a commitment to be totally different than what she was in the past."

Her last time pitching in a Montana uniform was in May at the Big Sky tournament, when the Grizzlies faced Weber State in an elimination game and got blanked 11-0, Haegele getting the start and not making it through the second inning.

She had a choice to make. More of the same, hoping what she'd been doing in the past would all of a sudden magically start working. Or she could take matters into her own hands and literally change who she was.

If she couldn't beat the game through the pursuit of perfection, she would build herself up to overpower it. "Over the summer I took time to reflect and I decided that nothing changes if nothing changes," she says.

"If I don't take steps to get stronger, I'm not going to see any difference on the field, and I wanted to see differences because I wasn't happy with how successful I was or the confidence that I had."

She got intentional with her nutrition, seeing it not just as sustenance but as fuel and building blocks for what she wanted to become. Then she turned her attention to the weight room, where, over time, she took her old self and created a shell of new muscle that has had a transformative effect.

Her velocity is up, her ability to throw harder for longer periods of time is up, and that means her confidence is soaring, giving the swagger that was always there even more reason to exist, to double its swag-ness.

"I have two seasons left here. I want to be as strong as possible and have the most energy I can possibly have to help lead this team," she says. "Are my numbers progressing in the weight room? Do I have more energy? Am I seeing results pitching? All my numbers are up."

She took a two-week break from pitching after the season, something she had never done before. Once she returned, once her body had recovered from the toil of the spring, from 27 appearances and more than 85 innings worked, once her lifting kicked in, she couldn't believe what she was seeing.

She set up the net in her front yard, grabbed the high-tech ball that measures velocity and spin rate and started throwing, just her with nobody watching. She retrieved the ball and figured something must be wrong. Pitches that had for years displayed upper 50s were now showing mid-60s.

She zeroed out the ball, went back and threw again, nearly beating the ball to the net in her excitement to pick it up and see the result: 65, 65, 66, 65.

"It was so much easier to get the ball to the net than it had ever been. It didn't take so much out of me. My legs felt stronger and everything felt easier," she says. "It felt like I was throwing so much harder."

The work was already paying off.

She reached out to her former pitching coach. Oh, yeah, you're throwing harder than the last time I saw you, Haegele was told. "It was nice to have some external validation, that it wasn't all in my head," she says.

She couldn't keep it to herself. She grabbed her dad from his office, had him film her in the front yard, looked at video from previous years, then checked out the latest evidence. "I paused it at my leg drive to see how much higher my foot had gotten. Comparing the two, actually seeing it, was crazy."

Ewing didn't know what she was getting personnel-wise when she accepted the job in June, only statistics that showed what had led the team to finishing last in the Big Sky Conference the previous two seasons.

She immediately started making phone calls, one by one, getting to know her new players. Who were they? What made them tick? What were their goals, their dreams, their aspirations? What did they want for Griz Softball?

"What stuck out about Grace from the first time I talked to her was her excitement," says Ewing, "her love for Griz Softball and this university. She was ready to get to work."

But that work had already begun, was already being rewarded. She wasn't going to wait through a coaching search before she had some direction. "You just don't have that happen very often," says Ewing. "The fire that burns inside of her motivates her to do things when people aren't looking."

Then, in August, she finally got to meet Haegele, this new version of her, in person. "You see her and any coach's eyes would light up," says Ewing. "Here was this tall, strong pitcher. Okay, this is definitely someone who is going to help us."

It's been a year of remakes, individual ones under the umbrella of the larger one, changes happening with the arrival of Ewing, this voice from the outside who wasn't afraid to look at the program with fresh eyes and keep what was working and scrap what wasn't.

She isn't a rah-rah coach, someone who will make paint melt off the walls with a fiery pregame speech, but she is an almost irresistible leader nonetheless. Sit with her for even a few minutes and you'll want to go wherever she's going.

She has a vision, she has a belief in the process that it will take to get there, she has a confidence in herself that it's going to happen. She is going to speak future championships right into existence.

"She's different than coaches I've had in the past," says Haegele. "She's a little more intense but she still cares deeply about her players. That was a change in a very good way. I could tell right off the bat, this is the intensity I need.

"Accountability, straight-forward, not beating around the bush. Hearing that honesty from her has helped in my personal development. Unwavering belief, honest feedback, trust, belief that grinding works. We've flipped our mindset."

Ewing compares Haegele's role on the team to that of a seventh-year senior, high praise for a junior now only days into her sixth semester at Montana. "She is a leader in how hard she works, how she motivates other people," Ewing says.

"There was a day each week in the fall when she didn't lift with everyone else because of her class schedule. Man, what are we missing today? Oh, Grace isn't here. When you have someone who can be that heartbeat, it's a difference."

At one point she was the only pitcher on the roster, before Ewing added freshman Cameryn Ortega and transfers Siona Halwani and Brianna Lachermeier over the summer. What Haegele does to raise the collective fortunes of the entire staff will be her biggest victory of the season.

"Grace has been a mentor for all of our pitchers," says Ewing.

"She just leads by example. For any new pitcher to the program to have somebody like that, who has that level of experience and that level of commitment, it lets them know this is what it takes to be successful at this level, these are the expectations to be a pitcher on this staff."

Haegele now has the look of a dominant pitcher. Her mind? That's a work in progress, will be until she's thrown her final pitch as a Grizzly, just as it is for any pitcher.

"I used to go into games thinking I had to put up this good statistic," she says. "I've tried that and it didn't work. Now my mindset is to have the same presence I have every single game, to give my defense a chance and having that trust. I don't have to be perfect, which frees me up a lot more."

In previous mini-offseasons, that time from the end of fall practices until the team meets back up in mid-January, Haegele has gone deep into the details of her mechanics, the positioning of a finger, how her foot is landing.

These past few months she's made changes to that approach as well. "I dedicated those three months to, how good can I make my pitches? Period. Can I make this pitch more competitive? Can I get this batter out?"

It's all coming together, Haegele no longer fretting if a 1-2 pitch that she wanted to do this did that instead. It didn't break quite right but the batter stood and watched strike three anyway. She got the out. She had done her job to help her team win. Was it perfect? Nope. Did it need to be? Nope.

"I'm a lot less focused on being perfect. Imperfection is okay," she says. "I can still win without my A game. I can win with my B or C game. I think I'm that good."

Yes, she's confident, just like you want your top-line pitcher to be. But now that confidence is based on something solid, the work she's put in from May to now. For some athletes, where the mind goes the body can follow. The inverse also can be true, that a strong body can create a similarly strong mind.

"I'm okay with having a bit more ego this year," she says. "If I'm successful, I'm going to stomp my foot. I'm not going to be ashamed to be successful. I've worked too hard not to have a little bit of ego this year.

"With the work I put in over the summer and the strength I've added, it's easier for me to block out negative thoughts because I have so much more confidence. I'm sure there is a physical-mental connection there. I have more energy so it's easier to have more positive thoughts."

Ewing recalls the day she walked into the indoor facility and Haegele was throwing, with Casper, her pitching coach, looking on. At home plate was a training device, nine pockets spaced out around the strike zone. The goal: hit all nine.

Haegele was dealing it so well that day she was calling the pocket she was going to hit before the ball had left her hand. "She's like, pocket 1, boom. Pocket 4, boom. Pocket 6, boom. She's calling her shot! She was Babe Ruth-ing it! From 43 feet away, just throwing missiles," says Ewing.

"As a coach, it's hard to show up to practice and have a kid impress you every single day. That kid impresses me every day. She can be on my team any day of the week."

Haegele wants it all, for herself, for her teammates, for the program, for the university. She'll want the ball when Montana opens its season in Phoenix next month against Colgate. Would excitedly take it when the Grizzlies face Northern Illinois right after.

That's the next frontier, then, of being That Pitcher but not carrying the weight of being That Pitcher. She's got the stuff. Now can she unleash it without feeling like she's carrying the weight of the program with her to the circle every outing she makes?

"We've got to help her manage that. My job is to take weight off her shoulders, to make her feel like she's light and free and can just go play the game," says Ewing. "If we can do that for her, she is going to have a great season. She's ready for it. She wants it.

"She wants the challenge and she wants the ball. She wants to be the person who puts this program where everybody wants it to be. She is going to lead us, no doubt about that. As a coach, you don't get many players like that, who will do anything and everything and go all-in on everything they're doing."

When Haegele talks about the season ahead, she gets a smile on her face, like she knows something that nobody outside of the people inside the program know, about what's to come in Phoenix next month, then in Texas and New Mexico, then in California, multiple times.

People will get glimpses, on ESPN+ broadcasts, in recaps, but most will have to wait until March 19, when Montana makes its home debut against MSU Billings, to see it in person, this thing that Ewing has inspired and has Haegele smiling.

"I'm not even that concerned with our win-loss record. Griz Softball is on a journey with this new staff, new mindset, new expectations," Haegele says. "We will put up good fights and we'll compete hard this year. If more wins come with that, so be it, but this is the beginning of a new Griz Softball.

"We will shock a lot of people. There is a new toughness to this team. People are going to see a lot more energy, a lot of life but also see a team that is calm, cool and collected. I'm not promising wins but I'm promising fight." And fight will almost always win out over the pursuit of perfection.

University of Montana Athletics

Players Mentioned

Grace Haegele

Siona Halwani

Brianna Lachermeier

Cameryn Ortega

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