All-America Honors for West Liberty's Amend
LOCK HAVEN, Pa. – West Liberty University senior pitcher Makenzie Amend was one of several Atlantic Region to earn All-America honors on Wednesday when the Division II Conference Commissioners' Association (D2CCA) released its 2021 NCAA Division II All-America Softball Team.
Honored earlier this spring as the Mountain East Conference and NCAA Division II Atlantic Region Pitcher of the Year, the hard-throwing righthander from Wheeling, W.Va. joined Shepherd third baseman Nicole Purtell as honorable mention selections on the All-America Team.
Rounding out the Atlantic Region honorees were Millersville catcher Faith Willenbrock and Shepherd Designated Player Cameron Davis as third team picks while Shippensburg first baseman Hannah Marsteller was named NCAA Division II Player of the Year.
Amend ranked among the national leaders in multiple categories in helping lead Coach Herb Minch's Hilltoppers to their second straight Mountain East Conference title and NCAA Tournament run. Amend went 11-3 in the circle with one save and a 1.32 ERA, striking out 169 batters and yielding only 62 hits and 20 walks in 105 2/3 innings. She held opposing hitters to a miniscule .164 batting average and became the first WLU hurler to surpass the 500-strikeout career milestone, finishing the season with a school-record 514 whiffs.
Dating back to the middle of March, Amend didn't surrender an earned run in 19 of her final 23 appearances and gave up only 13 extra-base hits all season. She had five games with double-figure strikeouts, topped by a 15-K performance in a 2-0 shutout of Davis & Elkins on April 17.
The Hilltopper ace made Mountain East Conference history on May 7 when she threw the first no-hitter in MEC Tournament history, a 3-0 shutout of West Virginia Wesleyan. She backed that up in the NCAA Division II Atlantic Regional at Kutztown (Pa.) when she teamed with Riley Bennington on a 7-0 no-hitter in the tournament opener against eventual regional runner-up East Stroudsburg. Amend had 10 strikeouts and didn't walk a batter in breezing through the first six frames.