Ace pitcher helps Trotters get first win of season
<p>Aspen Rude pitches a curveball to a Thompson Falls batter during the season opener for the Trotters.</p>
When it comes to how she treats batters at the plate, Aspen Rude lives up to her name. Off the mound, Aspen is a perfectly nice Plains High School senior. When she steps onto the softball diamond, things change.
Like a John Deere tractor she mows down batters with a variety of pitches including a fastball that was last clocked in the upper 50 mile per hour range. That speed is not far off from where college level players pitch.
Aspen is not rude to the other team in the traditional sense of the word. She does not play dirty. It is not something she can help, batters just cannot seem to hit her pitches.
Rude wasted no time in knocking the dust off this year. She did not play last season due to an injury suffered during a basketball game.
The last season she played during her sophomore year, she struck out 168 batters. There are only about 10 games in a season. There are only seven innings in a game, which means at a minimum, the pitcher faces 21 batters in a game. Do the math.
Ten games, 168 strikeouts: an average of 16 struck out batters per game. On average she struck out more than half the field per game which is the very definition of dominance. The league does not give out Cy Young awards but if they did, Rude would be buffing the shine on that trophy.
Bouncing back from injury is never easy but Rude is taking it in stride.
“My knee feels good. I tore my ACL and the meniscus in a basketball game against Troy last season. I tried to block a shot and I landed weird and I heard this crunch. I knew something bad had happened,” said Rude.
After surgery to repair the damage, Rude elected to sit out the next basketball season to allow her knee to heal.
“I didn’t want to risk it. My focus is on softball. It’s my last season so I wanted to be healthy.”
If one can make predictions after one game, it was a wise decision. The Trotters put in a commanding performance during the season opener versus Thompson Falls, winning 15-0 with Rude striking out 14 batters in five innings and allowing only one hit.
It was all just an average days work for Rude. Playing ball since the age of ten, Rude has always been a pitcher.
“I like the control I have as a pitcher. I get to control the pace of the game. A lot of it is on my shoulders,” said Rude.
Rude will be pitching for the Trotters during their next game scheduled for April 12 at Eureka.