It looked like another here-we-go-again moment last Friday night in Palo Alto, Calif., for the young Oregon softball team.
Losers of six in a row in the Pacific-10 Conference, freshman pitcher Samantha Skillingstad loaded the bases in the eighth inning with no outs, courtesy of a hit, a walk and a wild pitch. An inning past regulation, one score would have given No. 4 Stanford the win.
Then Skillingstad took matters into her own hands.
The freshman, making her first road start against the Cardinal, struck out the next three batters in a row, ending the inning emphatically.
The Ducks wound up losing the game 2-0 in the ninth inning, but if her coaches saw promise that Skillingstad could develop into a top-tier pitcher in the Pacific-10 Conference as early as her recruitment, then the one inning against Stanford last Friday clinched it. She finished with 10 strikeouts on the night.
“That was one of those defining moments in her career was to step up and do that against the number four team in the country,” Arendsen said. “Rarely a freshman has that kind of confidence.”
It’s not the first time Skillingstad has come of age earlier than expected this season.
Coming out of high school as one of the top recruits in the Northwest after going 28-1 with a microscopic 0.39 ERA for Shadle Park High in Spokane, Wash., Arendsen knew she could become the ace of the staff in time for the Ducks. But after a strong fall season, Skillingstad worked her way into the top of the four-pitcher rotation in time for the spring season. She hasn’t looked back since, throwing a team-high 151.2 innings this season, with the sixth-best ERA in the conference – the best mark for a freshman in the Pac-10.
A workhorse in high school who threw nearly every game, the right-handed Skillingstad hasn’t been fazed by the workload Oregon has given her so early.
“I pitched every game in high school,” Skillingstad. “I think how much power and how much effort it takes to throw a Pac-10 game is a lot more than high school, though.”
While her endurance and solid throwing mechanics she learned during high school have helped ease that transition into arguably the top softball conference in the U.S., her competitiveness is what has kept her improvement steady, despite the Ducks’ hitting woes that have played a major factor in the team’s 15-29 record this season, with a 2-13 record in the league that ranks last.
“She would take on grandma in tiddly-winks and try to beat her butt,” Arendsen said. “She’s not going to back down from anyone, and you love that in any player, let alone your pitcher.”
Arendsen gave her high marks in a comparison with three-time Olympic gold medal-winning pitcher Lisa Fernandez.
“She just would not back down from anyone,” Arendsen said. “Sammy’s got that stubbornness, too.”
Sophomore left-handed pitcher Brittany Rumfelt said the team’s catchers, who call all pitches themselves, have found out Skillingstad won’t blindly follow their lead, shaking off pitches she doesn’t like occasionally.
“If she doesn’t want to throw that pitch she’ll shake them off, which is a more of a seniority kind of pitcher,” Rumfelt said.
Known for an above-average rise-ball pitch coming out of high school that she still uses as her top pitch, Skillingstad has developed her complementary pitches faster than most expected, as well. She has worked with Oregon’s drop-ball pitchers Melissa Rice and Brittany Rumfelt to refine that pitch, while working on a curveball and change-up. Learning to mix pitches effectively was a necessary adjustment for the young pitcher, who could get away with a dominant rise-ball in high school.
Her results are impressive, however. Her 148 strikeouts this season are eighth-most in single-season history at Oregon, with six games remaining on the schedule.
“You learn to set up hitters more,” Skillingstad said. “I think that’s the whole point of getting better with every game. You have to learn some mistakes from the previous game, no matter who it is.”
And there have been mistakes. An inning after her three-strikeout performance, Skillingstad (11-12) lost the game to Stanford on a walk-off home run in the ninth inning. Skillingstad, along with all the pitchers, has also been the victim of poor offensive support throughout Pac-10 play, where the Ducks have scored the fewest runs in the league, and rank last in batting average (.235), slugging percentage (.381), on-base percentage (.315) and hits (262).
“She’s really been open to knowing that we can only control certain things. She can control her own performance and her own attitude,” Arendsen said. “She can’t control the umpires, the weather, if our defense plays well or if our offense plays well or not.”
Skillingstad is also the type of player who coaches can heap expectations on and handle it, Arendsen said. Maybe that’s why she predicts she’ll be in the upper echelon of pitchers in the conference, and possibly the country, sooner than everybody might expect.
“It’s been a great experience,” Skillingstad said.
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