1 of 2 Makenzie Amend
2 of 2 Annie Paterson
After helping lead the West Liberty University softball team to its third straight Mountain East Conference North Division championship, Hilltopper standouts Makenzie Amend and Annie Paterson have earned NCAA Division II All-Atlantic Region honors for the second consecutive season.
Amend was a second-team selection as a pitcher on the Division II Conference Commissioners' Association (D2CCA) All-Region Team while Paterson was a second-team pick on the D2CCA and National Fastpitch Coaches Association (NFCA) honor rolls in the utility/pitcher category.
Both teams were announced late Wednesday afternoon with NCAA Division II regional tournament action slated to get under way on Thursday at multiple sites.
Amend, a graduate student pitcher from Wheeling, W.Va., finished off her record-setting career with another dominating season. The hard-throwing righthander went 18-6 with a 1.60 ERA for head coach Herb Minch, giving up only 70 hits and 25 walks while striking out an MEC-best 208 batters in 131.1 innings pitched.
Amend led the region and ranked in the Top 10 nationally in WHIP (4th – 0.72), Strikeouts/7IP (5th – 11.1), and Hits/7IP (6th – 3.73). She broke her own MEC single-season record with a .152 opponents’ batting average while her 208 strikeouts were the second-highest in league history. Amend departs as the MEC’s career leader in strikeouts (724), strikeouts/7IP (9.14), hits/7IP (4.30) and opponents’ batting average (.175).
Paterson, a senior pitcher/1B/DP from Salem, Ohio, led the Black and Gold in nearly every offensive category this spring while also ranking near the top of the MEC in several pitching stats. Paterson hammered out 64 hits in 164 at-bats for a .398 batting average. She belted 9 home runs and 17 doubles for a .671 slugging percentage and eye-popping 1.106 OPS.
Paterson was 7-8 with a pair of saves in the circle, ranking among the MEC's Top 5 in Strikeouts (154) and ERA (2.53) and Top 10 in Opposing Batting Average (.227) and Innings Pitched (130.0).
Shippensburg first baseman Hannah Marsteller repeated as the D2CCA Atlantic Region Player of the Year while Seton Hill’s Morgan Ryan was the D2CCA Atlantic Region Pitcher of the Year. The NFCA did not make Player of the Year or Pitcher of the Year selections.
The Atlantic Region includes more than 40 teams from the Mountain East Conference (MEC), the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) and the Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference (PSAC) along with independents Bluefield State and Salem.