Prep Softball’s 2025 Player Of The Year: Hannah DeMarcus

Hannah DeMarcus Hannah DeMarcus RHP Pace | 2027 #15 Nation FL was pitching in a preseason scrimmage game at Pace High School in northwest Florida when her catcher, Lana Gonzales, made a comment that she will never forget.

“Bro, you throw just like Jayden.”

Gonzales was comparing her battery mate to Jayden Heavener, who had graduated from Pace the year before with every accolade imaginable. Heavener was the 2024 Florida Gatorade Player of the Year after pitching to a 0.44 ERA in 142 innings with 322 strikeouts, leading the Patriots to a state championship. She has not slowed down after moving up to the college ranks, finishing her freshman year at LSU with 152 strikeouts in 119 2/3 innings pitched with a 2.75 ERA.

So DeMarcus, who had not yet thrown a pitch at the varsity level at the time, already had lofty expectations attached to her. She lived up to them and then some as a sophomore this spring, striking out an astounding 418 batters in 175 innings of work with an ERA of 0.32. Although Pace lost 1-0 to Doral Academy in the FHSAA Class 6A state title game, DeMarcus has established herself as the Patriots’ next dominant ace, and high school hitters across Florida still have to deal with her for another two seasons.

Those eye-popping numbers helped DeMarcus earn Prep Softball National High School Player of the Year honors.

“It made me excited, because I knew that I had what it took to fill (Heavener’s) shoes and do the job just like she did,” DeMarcus said. “It was the first time (Gonzales) had caught me in a live at-bat. Jayden and I were obviously different pitchers, but we throw very similarly, spin- and speed-wise. It definitely helped Lana, already catching Jayden, to catch me too.”

DeMarcus’ explosive breakout season did not come out of nowhere, but even joining her first softball team at age 9—she had previously participated in cheer, gymnastics and dance—made her a relative latecomer. Inspired by her older brother, who played baseball, DeMarcus was not a pitcher at first, and some early struggles at the plate had her wanting to quit. But her father soon took over as her team’s coach, which kept her in the game, and in her third season of rec softball, she took up pitching because her team was short on capable arms.

Before DeMarcus started pitching, her rec ball team was winless. Once she became a pitcher, the turnaround was instantaneous. After that season, she was asked to play for the local all-star team, and soon after, her father had her try out for travel ball. DeMarcus’ stock was rising quickly, and it has not stopped shooting upward since.

“I was just a natural at it. It just came naturally for me,” DeMarcus said. “I could pound the strike zone, which in 10U is what you need. That was when I figured out that I could be a pitcher, and I started taking lessons for it and it went up from there.”

At first, DeMarcus was playing a regional schedule in travel ball for a team based in southeast Alabama. But at a tournament in Newberry, Fla., she drew the attention of Kip Taylor, a prominent club coach with the Georgia Impact outside of Atlanta whose entire team comprised high-end Division I prospects.

Her prowess was immediately evident to Taylor, who convinced DeMarcus and her parents to join his team and play a national travel ball schedule that included tournaments as far away as Colorado and California.

“She was dominating a really good team down there,” Taylor said. “We just continued to have dialogue with her and her family, just to see if they were ready to play more of a national schedule, knowing that she had the talent to compete and play on a team like ours with other SEC-type players. It just ended up being a good fit.”

Despite that unmistakable talent, DeMarcus had to spend her freshman season on the junior varsity team at Pace. The Patriots were blessed with not only Heavener, but also Mallory Baker, another 2024 graduate who had an outstanding freshman year at Northwest Florida State College. There were simply no innings available for DeMarcus, who still was able to learn from two future college pitchers as she continued to develop her game.

“She’s grown a lot in the last year,” Pace varsity head coach Lexi Alexander said. “Her control got a lot better over the last year, her rise ball, curveball, that kind of thing, just everything all around improved.”

DeMarcus’ signature pitch is her rise ball, which she throws lower than many other pitchers. It leaves batters thinking the pitch will fall off the table and out of the strike zone, only for it to stay on plane, allowing her to steal called strikes. Her curveball is especially effective against right-handed hitters, and against better competition, especially lefties, she will mix in a changeup.

Hardly anyone she faced in her first varsity season could figure out that pitch mix. DeMarcus struck out more than two-thirds of all the batters who came to the plate against her, and her 418 total strikeouts ranked second nationally this spring. She led the country with nine no-hitters, according to MaxPreps, including two perfect games. And she did all that while allowing just 33 walks, a remarkable strikeout-to-walk ratio of 12.67-to-1.

“I was kind of shocked at how (well) I was doing early on in the season. I wasn’t really expecting to come in and be that dominant, but I was prepared. I put in the work,” DeMarcus said. “Working ahead in the count and taking things one pitch at a time have been big things for me this year. It’s really helped me lock in and get ahead in counts and work through the zone.”

Pace opened its season on Feb. 18, and DeMarcus did not allow an earned run until April, keeping her perfect ERA intact for 66 innings to start the year. That stretch included a 12-inning win on March 27 against Niceville, in which DeMarcus struck out 33 batters in a no-hitter, issuing just one walk. She twice struck out 20 batters in a seven-inning game, and finished the season averaging nearly 17 strikeouts per seven innings.

The only run DeMarcus allowed in the state championship defeat came on a bases-loaded walk, but she still struck out 12 and held Doral Academy to just a single tally, the only time the Firebirds scored fewer than two runs in a game all year.

“She doesn’t try to strike anybody out,” Alexander said. “If she throws a ball, she knows she can come right back with a strike and ends up striking out a lot of people. She gets a lot of whiffs, so her ball obviously must be moving pretty good if people are whiffing a lot on her. She never really seems bothered by anything, and that’s really tough for a 16-year-old girl to just have that composure and be able to do what she does.”

DeMarcus is still a few months away from the start of her formal recruitment on Sept. 1, but college coaches are already in touch with Taylor and flooding DeMarcus’ mailbox. Florida State, Georgia, LSU, Oregon, Clemson and Auburn have all sent her mail, and she has attended camps at Florida State, Georgia, LSU, Auburn and Ole Miss, among others.

And as she enters the summer preceding her junior year, DeMarcus is still far from a finished product. She hopes to study exercise physiology in college and is considering becoming a physical therapist. She is also one of just two rising juniors on her travel team, with teammates committed to the likes of Florida, Oklahoma, LSU and Arkansas.

“Before every game, I take a minute and I just breathe, and I tell myself that I can do it. I just like to be where my feet are, be present, be in the moment, and my routine is very good,” DeMarcus said. “Sometimes I can get a little too fast-paced in games, and I’ve had to just take it one pitch at a time and slow the game down a little bit. That’s been a big thing for me this year, is one pitch at a time. That phrase has really helped me get through some tough games.”