STARKVILLE — The movements reflect experience.
Shuffle step, shuffle step, pause, read … go.
Maegen Ellis slides safely into third base and springs up ready for more. She inches off the base while looking at second base. When she sees the throw go there in an attempt to retire a teammate, she is off again. Just like the last time, Ellis’ speed catches the defense off guard and she slides in safely with the first run of the game.
Half an inning isn’t complete and Ellis already has made her mark.
“She has the best instincts of just about any athlete I have coached since I have been at Oak Hill Academy,” Oak Hill Academy coach Marion Bratton said. “She is that good.”
Ellis had a triple, an RBI, and scored three runs Monday to help the Oak Hill Academy fast-pitch softball team start its season with an 18-0 victory against Starkville Academy. The game was shortened to four innings due to the mercy rule.
Meg McBrayer had a single, double, and two RBIs, Mamie Allen had a triple, and Kim Kelly added a single for the Lady Raiders, who capitalized on 16 walks and five hit batters. Allen didn’t allow a hit, walked one, and struck out nine to get the victory.
While Bratton expects Allen, a senior right-hander, to solidify things in the circle, he will look to Ellis to stabilize the defense at third base. Not only does the junior, who also is a standout on the school’s girls basketball team, read the game on the bases, but she also knows how to play defense. In the bottom of the third, Ellis was playing in to protect against the bunt. When she saw McClain Morgan square to bunt, she quickly moved up and was a couple of steps in front of home and nearly in position to make a play on the foul pop.
It doesn’t matter whether you refer to her as a spark plug or as an anchor. Ellis is going to attack the game with the same energy every time.
“I think I have more experience throughout the team,” Ellis said. “I have played softball longer than everybody else, and I just try to get everybody closer as a team because it is not a one-man sport. It is a team, and you can’t win with just one person.”
Bratton said Ellis does little things like get leads off bases and read the movements of opponents naturally because she loves the game and is always working to improve. Ellis credits her brothers, Nathan and Cameron, for helping her grow as a player. Bratton adds Ellis’ father, John, to that list, and said Maegen has learned from all of them and is eager to soak up more.
“She has two older brothers, and they both played for me. She is the best athlete in the family. The brothers know that. I have already told them,” Bratton said.
Ellis and Starkville Academy shortstop Mary Austin Barber were in Gulfport on Sunday playing in a tournament with the Mississippi Blast, a fast-pitch travel team out of Jackson. The squad played 60-70 games since the end of the 2011-12 school year, and wrapped up its season with a first-place showing Sunday.
Bratton said Ellis wouldn’t have thought to miss Oak Hill Academy’s season opener after a Sunday packed with games. He said her knowledge of the game and love for the sport is infectious.
“She knows what it takes,” Bratton said. “If she keeps going the way she is going, a lot of good things are going to come her way.”
Oak Hill Academy girls basketball coach Stan Hughey agrees. He said Ellis, a point guard, has a knack for getting the ball into the paint and making things happen. He said she has been leading his team ever since she was a ninth-grader.
“It is amazing how she can see the floor and she is so unselfish,” Hughey said. “She just makes everybody around her better.”
Hughey understands fast-pitch softball is Ellis’ first love. Still, he said she worked with the girls basketball team as much as she could this summer. At a tournament at Jackson Academy, the team went 1-2 the first day, 2-1 the second day, and 3-0 on the final day. Led by Ellis, the Class AA Mississippi Association of Independent Schools Lady Raiders hung in and lost a close game to Forest Hill, the Class 6A state champion in the Mississippi High School Activities Association.
Hughey said Ellis is as much a spark plug on the basketball court as she is on the diamond.
“She is a really smart kid and a really good student,” Hughey said. “She is just what you want in a student-athlete. … A lot of times, really good players have that little attitude that ‘I am real good.’ Maegen has none of that.”
Ellis enjoyed her first season with the Blast and hopes it helped her attract the attention of college scouts. She has two more years of high school ball, but she knows the work she does on the travel ball circuit will help her realize her goal of earning a scholarship to play softball in college.
“I have been playing since I was 8 or 10 years old,” Ellis said. “I just have always loved softball. When I was little, (my older brothers) pushed me all day. I know they wanted me to grow up and to play college ball.”
That drive keeps Ellis moving, which is why it’s common for her uniform to show a game’s worth of work in the first inning. This season, the Lady Raiders are wearing black uniforms, so signs of Ellis’ hard work may be a little harder to spot. But whether it’s how she gets a lead off a base, how she gauges the strength of a catcher’s arm, or how she flicks her wrists and lines a triple down the left-field line, Ellis has the skills and the intangibles a coach needs in a team leader.
“I wish some of my guys had her work ethic,” Bratton said. “When you do what she does and you work as hard as she works, you get noticed, and folks are looking. They really are. I am really proud of her.”
n In other action Monday in Meridian, the Central Academy fast-pitch softball team defeated Russell Christian 14-5 in its first official game of the season. Rain Friday washed out Central Academy’s season opener against Winston Academy.
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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