Softball’s “Scary” Good Stats Strive to Succeed
Monze Meraz-Lerma | SPORTS EDITOR
April 09, 2026
Whittier College Softball dominates the SCIAC in batting averages and individual performances but strives for a more consistent performance. With a team of SCIAC leaders, the team maintains a position to find higher rankings collectively and possibly a post-tournament spot, a title the team hasn’t reached since 2019.
“We haven’t put it together yet,” Head Coach Terry Schweikert says. “But when we can put it all together—good pitching, good defense, timely hitting—we are scary. We can be really good.”
The Poets hold scary stats against the conference as third in batting average and other top rankings in most other stats, including a notable first place spot in home runs. This comes from four Poets taking up spots in the top-10 home runs list, including No. 1 Mariah Rodriguez.
Rodriguez, a sophomore catcher, plays loud on the field, directing the pitcher and possible plays. Besides her home run top-title, she also leads the SCIAC in slugging percentage and doubles.
Despite her strong demeanor and dominating presence on the field, she admits that last year she had a bad case of the yips—a psychological state where athletes overthink their abilities, often leading to failure.
“I felt like I couldn’t throw the ball, I felt like I couldn’t even feel it,” Rodriguez says. “I was scared to mess up.”
Rodriguez recalls feeling stiff and unsure in every pitch she returned back to the pitcher. After speaking to her now coach, Jessica Purcell, and practicing all summer, Rodriguez has come back as a force to be reckoned with.
“I want people to look at me and go, ‘Yeah, that’s Mariah Rodriguez,’” she says.
The team stands sixth in the conference, where only the top four teams enter the post-season tournament. With four more three-series match-ups, the Poets final placement is still up in the air. In their recent series against Occidental, the Poets fell short 3-5 in the first game. They followed up the next day with 1-0 and then a big 16-0 win, demonstrating the team’s ability to find huge, scary successes.
“We have amazing bright spots and not so bright spots, too,” Schweikert says. “The focus is just about competing and finding that consistency.”
Schweikert emphasizes a “pitch-by-pitch” strategy, in which the team takes the game one pitch at a time in efforts to find stabilization and, hopefully, victories. Bella Peinado, a senior pitcher, serves as the team’s starter, always taking the pitching circle with a calm and collected expression.
“Once they call my name [in the lineup], and we go and do the national anthem, I do deep breaths and tell myself a lot of words of affirmation, like ‘I’m the best,’” Peinado says.
“The best” she is. Peinado has been named the Athlete of the Week for two consecutive weeks, credited for winning a pitching dual against one of Williams College’s nationally ranked pitchers and, most recently, throwing 10 shutout innings total in the series against Oxy. She’s ran through the motions of momentum-filled wins but confesses that the higher stakes of conference games often gets to her.
“It feels like we’re putting a lot of pressure on ourselves because now we’re in conference, and we’re facing these teams rather than these out of state teams where we just play them once or twice, and then, we don’t see them again,” Peinado says.
The team spends time scouting out their opponents’ pitches, average hits, and overall, typical strategy before game day. Although this preparation helps the team avoid any surprises, it doesn’t completely make the daunting importance of every conference win disappear. The Poets’ proof is in their pudding of stats, but sometimes, that’s not enough to pull them out of losses, as seen in previous games.
“They’re not better than us talent-wise. They’re just held to a certain standard just because of the name on their back,” Rodriguez says, referring to their match-up against No. 7 University of Redlands. “Just because of the name on their back, they’re expected to win, and we kind of let that get to us. Just because we’re Whittier, I feel like people expect us to lose.”
Although Schweikert comes from a DI playing and coaching background, she carries a different approach to this concept of expected standards. She took the opportunity to coach DIII at the College last season and prioritizes accountability and keeping the team first. Schweikert doesn’t see DIII as a difference in capability but instead as an important experience that fosters a dual student-athlete identity.
“The game doesn’t know what level you play,” Schweikert says. “Life doesn’t know what level you are. Experience doesn’t know what level you are, nor does leadership.”
The Poets have less than a month left to “clean up the little stuff” and play “dangerously,” as Rodriguez says. In the meantime, Schweikert leaves the team with a reminder: “[They must] believe they’re as good as their coaching staff believes they are.”