All-Area MVP: Fremont pitcher Brinley Ellsworth sent batters back to the dugout all season long
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- Brinley Ellsworth poses for a photo outside Fremont High School on June 2, 2022. Ellsworth, a senior pitcher, is the 2022 Standard-Examiner All-Area Softball MVP.
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- Fremont’s Brinley Ellsworth readies to fire a pitch in a prep softball game against Farmington on Tuesday, April 26, 2022, in Plain City. (BRIAN WOLFER, Special to the Standard-Examiner)
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- Brinley Ellsworth poses for a photo outside Fremont High School on June 2, 2022. Ellsworth, a senior pitcher, is the 2022 Standard-Examiner All-Area Softball MVP.
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- Brinley Ellsworth poses for a photo outside Fremont High School on June 2, 2022. Ellsworth, a senior pitcher, is the 2022 Standard-Examiner All-Area Softball MVP.
PLAIN CITY — A few years ago, Fremont High senior Brinley Ellsworth was at a softball tournament in Delta and decided to change her pitching windup.
What eventually resulted from that decision is a somewhat unique pre-pitch routine that starts with her leaning forward, pulling her glove into her body, bending all the way down and touching her glove to the dirt next to her right foot, rising back up, launching forward off her right foot with the back of her left leg practically facing the batter, then sending a pitch.
“Things just started happening. It came out of habit, honestly. That wasn’t my plan for sure, I probably wouldn’t have picked that, but it kind of just happened and I haven’t been able to get rid of it since,” Ellsworth said.
“It’s different for sure.”
An elongated windup was the first thing batters saw when they faced Ellsworth. More often than not, the last thing batters saw was the ball in the catcher’s glove and the umpire signaling for the third strike.
“This game is about illusion and about being able to trick who you’re facing, and I think this gives her a little bit of an edge by people going, ‘What is she doing?'” Fremont head coach Mandy Koford said.
Strikeouts were Ellsworth’s thing this year. She racked up 177 strikeouts in 106 innings against just 24 walks with an ERA of 2.27 in helping Fremont win the Region 1 championship.
Ellsworth is the 2022 Standard-Examiner All-Area Softball MVP.
“I had big goals for this year and I wanted to not repeat things last year, like Clearfield,” Ellsworth said.
“Clearfield” refers to the 2021 regular-season finale between Fremont and Clearfield, where FHS needed a win to secure a share of the Region 1 title.
The Silverwolves led that game 3-1 in the fifth inning before the Falcons teed off for six runs, three against Ellsworth, to go up 7-3, eventually win 7-4 and win the outright region title.
“I think that was good motivation to just work harder and get better in that area, and also being a senior now I feel like I needed to step up a little bit,” Ellsworth said. “I just wanted to leave Fremont knowing that I gave it all I had.”
This year, with the region championship on the line in the regular-season finale against Weber, Ellsworth threw a one-hit, five-inning shutout with nine strikeouts in a 13-0 win.
Overall, Ellsworth improved in all aspects from 2021 to 2022. Her pitches were fast this year and had a lot more spin. She fixed a mechanical problem with the path her arm took before and after throwing the ball, and also linked up in the offseason with Mattie Snow, Boise State softball’s pitching coach and formerly Weber State’s pitching coach in 2018.
“She’s really good with, like, the mental side of things and I think that helps a lot from last year because mentally, I think I’m a lot stronger this year in controlling the things that I can control,” Ellsworth said.
All of those things allowed her to pitch well in 2022, especially in big games.
“I remember Farmington was probably my first one that was like that,” Ellsworth said. “I knew it was a big game and, like, I just had to step up. I kind of zoned in, I made sure I could focus on the things that I could control — obviously, I know my defense is there, they’re awesome, they’re going to back me up if a ball gets hit.”
The title-clinching win over Weber was part of a dominant stretch for Ellsworth late in the season.
In a six-inning win over Syracuse, Ellsworth struck out 17 batters while allowing one hit. The only out Fremont recorded that didn’t come by strikeout was a ground ball hit to … Ellsworth.
Fremont’s second playoff game against West Jordan saw Ellsworth, who’s signed with Colby Community College in Kansas, strike out eight in 3 1/3 relief innings.
The turning point, Koford said, was a 7-0 loss at Weber in mid-April where Ellsworth got pulled after surrendering four runs in two innings. Koford told Ellsworth in a team “soul-searching” moment after the game that Ellsworth shouldn’t be afraid of any team she faced.
“I think she bought into that and became pretty dominant,” Koford said. “She started focusing on her spins and on mentally just digging in, and it’s no credit of mine, it’s all her that she figured out how to tap into her greatness.
“I remember sitting there on the bucket calling pitches at times and just getting chills being like, ‘holy cow, she’s figured some stuff out.'”
Another change that helped had to do with the types of pitches Ellsworth threw. Early on, Koford called a lot of curveballs and screwballs, then called more riseballs.
“And it started working like crazy, to the point where we throwing probably 70% riseballs and they were just jumping. And even when they weren’t she was able to get enough spin on it where they would pop it up,” Koford said.
There was the 17-strikeout game against Syracuse, a shutdown game against Farmington and a host of other good performances this season by Ellsworth.
But Koford thought one of Ellsworth’s best games was actually the 5-0 loss against eventual state champion Riverton in the final eight of the state tournament.
That game may have been a loss, but it was also only the eighth game in 29 this year where Riverton was held to single-digit scoring. There were plenty of reasons for any pitcher to get a little scared facing a dominant Riverton team, but by then, Ellsworth had long stopped backing down from other teams.
Connect with reporter Patrick Carr via email at pcarr@standard.net, on Twitter @patrickcarr_ and Instagram @standardexaminersports.