They might be the greatest brother-sister catching combination in the country — and the younger half is just a freshman.
Mari Lyn Petrick is in her first year playing for the Oregon softball team and Ben, one of her two older brothers, is in his fourth year playing for the Colorado Rockies.
In her first year of collegiate softball, Mari Lyn has made the transition with relative ease. Hitting .296 in 30 games this season, she has shared the catching chores with sophomore transfer Jenn Poore in addition to earning a few starts as the team’s designated player. The Ducks’ Petrick has five doubles, two home runs and 14 RBI with three games remaining.
“I’m really proud of her with what she has done,” Ben said Wednesday during a telephone interview. “I get more excited, I think, looking over the Internet finding her box scores and seeing what she did more than I get excited with what is going on with what I’m doing.”
Because of the distance that separates them and their busy schedules, the siblings do not often get to see each other play.

“I just try to talk to her whenever I get a chance to hear what she has to say, whether it’s about her defense or her offense, and just try to share anything that I have learned in my career,” Ben said.
Raised in Hillsboro with a family of athletes — their father is the athletic director at Glencoe High and older brother, Ryan, is a teacher and coach at the same school — Mari Lyn enjoys working out with Ben and tries to pick up as much as possible from him.
“It helps me as well, because I’m getting my workouts in too,” Ben said. “My talking about hitting and defensive stuff with her also reminds me of certain things and helps me out as well. Unfortunately I haven’t seen her play a lot, because I’ve been gone for the past seven summers and springs. So when I get to see her hit in my off-season work with her, it’s really fun. Hopefully it helps her out some, but she’s a pretty hard worker all by herself without me being around. She expects a lot of good things out of herself.”
Coming out of the same high school as her older brother, who was also a standout in football and turned down scholarships to play for several Pacific-10 Conference schools, Mari Lyn said that she never felt any pressure to perform after the high standards that Ben had set.
“I didn’t really feel like I ever had to live up to his expectations by any means,” she said.
Along with playing on the diamond, Mari Lyn was named second-team all-metro in volleyball her junior and senior years at Glencoe and also played on the basketball squad.
“She really has worked very hard in all of the sports she has played all the way up,” Ben said. “I’m always worried that she doesn’t get a lot of the credit that she deserves.”
As her freshman campaign with Oregon has progressed and her play has improved, she has impressed head coach Brent Rincon to earn more playing time of late.
“She’s a quality hitter and I think she has proven that over the last month,” Rincon said. “She is going to have a very bright future here.”
While Ben is in the middle of his season with Colorado, the season for Mari Lyn and the Ducks is quickly coming to a close.
“We’re kind of sad that it is coming to an end, and we know that we don’t have a really good chance to go on, but we are still going use those games to prepare us to be better players for next year,” she said. “I have no idea what is going to transpire for next year, but I just hope that I can add something to the team wherever it has to be and however I can.”