Five 2028s Powering Their Lineups

For some players, it takes a minute to get back in the swing of things when high school softball season starts. For others, it's as simple as turning on a switch. With fall softball underway around the country, the athletes on this list are putting up numbers you'd be more likely to see at the end of a season rather than after only a handful of games.   Below, Prep Softball highlights five players who are hitting the cover off the ball and lifting their teams to great heights.    After hitting 14 bombs in her freshman season for the Crete Cardinals, Madynn Dunham is already halfway to that total in her sophomore campaign. In just 13 games as of this writing, Dunham has a .548 batting average, 23 hits, 21 RBIs, seven home runs, four doubles, and three triples. Her hitting heroics have helped the Cardinals to an 11-2 record and an overall run differential of 122 to 44. She is tied for second among all players in Nebraska in home runs, and is tied for fourth overall nationwide. Her offense isn't the only story, as she also has 11 wins in the circle to go along with a 2.40 ERA, 65 strikeouts, and only eight walks. All of this success is coming off of a productive summer with Select Fastpitch, in which she racked up 50 RBIs, seven home runs, and 74 hits. She knows how to do damage and is the ideal hitter you would want at the plate in crunch time.     Olivia McDermott likes to hit doubles, and chances are most pitchers in Colorado have now figured that out. In only 12 games played at the time of this writing, McDermott already has an astounding 16 doubles for the Cherry Creek Bruins. She is the only player among the top 50 players in the nation in batting average with 15 doubles or more. She also has a .675 batting average, 27 hits, 24 RBIs, three triples, and two home runs. After not playing her freshman year, she made an immediate impact on the team starting on day one of this season. Her first three hits of her high school career were all doubles, and in her second game she went 5-for-5 with two more doubles. She currently leads the team in every offensive category except home runs, for which she ranks second.     After having an impressive freshman season in which she piled up 12 extra-base hits over 22 games, Hadley Ivy already has 16 of them in only 12 games played as a sophomore. The Colorado product has eight doubles, five triples, and three home runs at the time of this writing for the Basalt Longhorns. To say that she is powering up her team would be an understatement, as she leads her squad in batting average (.667), on-base percentage (.717), runs (23), hits (26), RBIs (20), and slugging percentage (1.359). She is proficient at using the entire field when she hits, and her speed (she has six stolen bases so far this season) is yet another weapon that she brings to the table. She also is the team leader in ERA, and has two wins in the circle along with 27 strikeouts.     River Evans has one of the hottest bats in the country, and the stats prove it. Sixty-five percent of her hits so far this season have been extra-base hits, including seven home runs, four doubles, and two triples. She has already matched the total number of hits she had all of last season (20) for the Rabun County Wildcats, and her 30 RBIs are tied for first among all sophomores nationwide at the time of this writing. To put her impact on the Wildcats into perspective, she has over a third of the team's total RBIs. Evans has power to all fields, and has an ability to hit wicked line drives, along with high, towering bombs.     Pitchers are having a difficult time getting Janiya Fields out. In total, she has only recorded 10 outs so far this season in 49 plate appearances and has only struck out once for the South Cobb Eagles. In addition to her 14 walks, she has a .735 batting average, 25 hits, 25 runs scored, 18 stolen bases, and 23 RBIs at the time of this writing. She currently leads all sophomores nationwide in batting average, and ranks third in on-base percentage (.796). She has hit safely in 11 of 15 games this season, and is well on her way to setting career highs in every offensive category. Perhaps most impressive out of all her stats is that she has only left five runners on base while at the plate this year. So if you need runs on the scoreboard, Fields is the player you need on your team.

For some players, it takes a minute to get back in the swing of things when high school softball season starts. For others, it's as simple as turning on a switch. With fall softball underway around the country, the athletes on this list are putting up numbers you'd be more likely to see at the end of a season rather than after only a handful of games.