NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Chicago Bandits used the 21st overall pick Monday night to select Oregon senior shortstop DJ Sanders in the National Pro Fastpitch draft.
Sanders, a former standout at New Hope High School in Columbus, was taken with the fourth pick of the fourth round of the professional softball league’s annual draft.
Sanders is hitting .287 with 11 home runs and 32 RBIs in her first season at Oregon, which ended last week 38-7 and 12-3 in the Pacific-12 Conference. Oregon was ranked No. 4 in the National Fastpitch Coaches Association poll. It ended last week tied with UCLA in the loss column atop the Pac-12 standings.
Sanders started her career at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. She didn’t attract a lot of attention from college coaches during a standout multi-sport career at New Hope High, but she took advantage of an opportunity from Louisiana coach Michael Lotief at Louisiana. Sanders blossomed into one of the nation’s best players in her time in Lafayette, Louisiana. Last season, Sanders earned Sun Belt Conference Player of the Year honors and was one of 10 finalists for national player of the year. As a junior, she led the NCAA with 29 home runs and 82 RBIs. She hit a career-high .388, posted a .524 on-base percentage, and had a NCAA-best 1.013 slugging percentage. She also drew 46 walks and struck out only 27 times. Sanders started all 55 games at shortstop and made only seven errors.
Following the firing of Lotief in November 2017, Sanders announced she was going to transfer to Oregon.
Oregon will take on former No. 1 Washington on Friday in Game 1 of a three-game, Pac-12 weekend series. Then-No. 3 UCLA swept then-No. 1 Washington in three games last weekend.
Sanders wasn’t the only player with ties to the state selected. The Aussie Spirit drafted Ole Miss pitcher Kaitlin Lee in the fourth round. Lee was one of 13 pitchers taken out of the 23 picks in the event.
“This is an incredible opportunity,” Lee said. “It’s super humbling and incredibly exciting. I wasn’t looking forward to my senior year ending so now it’s just awesome to have another season to look forward to.”
The first selection in the fourth round, Lee is the second player in program history to be drafted in the NPF, joining Rebel great RT Cantillo, a draftee in 2014.
“This is a proud papa moment,” Ole Miss coach Mike Smith. “This is my first professional player, so Kaitlin will always be part of those teams of firsts. I’m really excited for her. She’s demonstrated a lot of hard work, determination and grit to get here. She’s just a hard-nosed player and that kid deserves everything she’s getting right now.”
In two years, Lee has cemented herself as one of the greatest players in program history, laying claim to six single-season school records set in 2017, including wins, complete games, shutouts, innings pitched, appearances, and starts.
A former junior college player at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College, Lee rose to national fame during her junior season as she threw every single pitch of Ole Miss’ run to the championship game of the 2017 Southeastern Conference tournament, earning MVP honors. Lee threw three-straight complete games in the Oxford Regional to lead Ole Miss to its first NCAA Super Regional.
The Aussie Spirit is operated by Softball Australia, the nation’s governing body for the sport of softball. The Aussie Spirit will be based in the Midwest and will compete at locations throughout the region. Those locations will include Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, and Missouri.
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