Inside Pitch: 2023 Pac-12 Commit Ashley Wolfe Prepares for the Start of High School Softball in Wisconsin After an Amazing 2021 Year

Outstanding middle infielder Ashley Wolfe can only hope that 2022 matches the great year that was 2021 for herself on and off the softball field.

As she chronicled in her December “Inside Pitch (click HERE to read it!),” she finished last year with a bang as she committed to Coach Laura Berg and the Oregon State Beavers as well as learning that her mother, Nicole, was found to be free of cervical cancer.

Ashley also had a year to remember in softball as she was ranked 45^th in the 2023 Extra Elite 100, was named to the Extra Inning 2021 All-Summer Team as she went 30-for-31 in steals and scored 34 runs to help her Chaos club team advance in the Alliance Championships with a big walk-off home run and was also selected as a 1^st Team Extra Inning Softball High School All-American after batting .588 with 50 hits including eight home runs while leading the state with 17 doubles and 53 runs scored.

One of our favorite memories of Ashley will be seeing the impressive video she put together last August that helped her attract the attention of more than two dozen top college programs nationwide… here is the clip that shows how dedicated–and talented–she is:

Now, Ashley is locked in to getting ready for her junior year of high school and today talks about how she and her Hornets teammates are looking to do something her softball program has never done before: make it to State!

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I go to Preble High in Green Bay, Wisconsin and play travel ball with the St. Louis Chaos 18U – Alverado team in the Summer.

I wanted to write this blog about my high school team: from last season’s success to this upcoming 2022 season and how we prepare during the winter months for spring softball.

I also wanted to explain how I get ready for high school ball and transition into my travel team schedule during the Summer.

Last year, my Preble Hornets won 23 of our 26 games and held the #1 ranking in Division 1 for five straight weeks before dropping to #2 in the final ranking after our loss in the Sectional final (that would have taken us to State, which would have been the first time in school history).

We had an amazing season and our head coach, Ron Metzler, who is in his 12th year and was the Conference Coach of the Year in 2021, can agree with this!

“No team is going to be perfect,” says Coach Ron. “You need a good team, luck and goals within your team to set the standard for the season.”

His—and everyone else’s expectations for this year—are simple: continue to build off of last season and take that next step… make it to State!

When Coach was asked what the rankings meant to him, the program, and the high school, he states:

“Rankings are just rankings. They make you feel good, and it serves two purposes: they are for fun and allows people who don’t know you from around the state to respect you.”

The typical winter practices we have are led by the upperclassmen as our coaches are not allowed to give us instruction until our season starts. We have open gyms where we throw, field grounders, and take fly balls.

We have yoga one day a week which is at our hitting garage. We also have two days of high school hitting in which we have a really awesome men’s fastpitch thrower who volunteers his time to pitch to us… this is great to have!

And we have weight program in the high school weight room. This is typically how we prepare as a high school team during the winter months, all indoors of course, but we make it work!

Heading into this season, we are deep with two All-State players returning in me and senior Ava DeBaker along with four other senior standouts who were All-Conference: Melody Siudzinski, Madi Whitney, Ariane Kollman and Brooke Hock.

When asked what to expect from these returning players for this upcoming season, Coach Ron responded:

“What I expect is for them to compete better and to win. They need to handle the pressure of facing the competition we will see this year. We also have many newcomers coming in.”

As for my approach, going from high school to travel ball is not a huge difference for me. If you get ready mentally and treat every game, every pitcher, and every ground ball with the same focus, then it’s really pretty easy.

For me personally I don’t go into these high school games thinking I should be the best one here, I see this as a great opportunity to have fun, make friends and be with people who I will have a relationship with outside of high school.

I so enjoy playing the game that I love but, most importantly, high school ball is about playing for something bigger then yourself—it’s about competing for your high school and community!

I see it too as a great opportunity to get better as a player, as a person and as a team.

During the winter when it’s supposed to be an off season for many, I am in the workout room 3-4 days a week, hitting four days a week at 5 am before school. I also do infield work 2-3 times a week, along with all the high school opportunities.

I am always staying busy as there is always something to do and it’s never really an off season when you’re preparing for the upcoming season twice as hard as you would during the season.

Off to the side, I find time to have fun by hanging out with friends and laughing with the people around me but when it’s time to do a drill I’m all in and focused because I know that this one drill or one ground ball might seem like nothing, but it could be the winning ground ball in the World Series or in the State Championship Game.

Working on the proper footwork or doing drills to improve my athleticism—to make something out of nothing that no one would think is possible—is something I’m always thinking about.

When it comes to getting ready for the summer season while in high school, I treat everything in practice as if it were a game. I have the same mindset in high school as I do in travel ball… as if I’m going up against the #1 pitcher in the country and my at-bat is with the game on the line!

— Ashley Wolfe, Preble High middle infielder