Maxwell Shows She Can Handle Emotions, Good, Bad, and Big 12 Pitcher of the Week
STILLWATER -- Kelly Maxwell has pitched all of two games in her college career, actually a total of six innings of work and she has already been named the Big 12 Pitcher of the Week. The conference bestowed her with that honor on Tuesday morning.
Maxwell is a redshirt freshman out of Friendswood, Texas and she made her debut last Saturday in Baton Rouge against Florida A&M. The Rattlers were striking out, grounding out, popping up and not only didn't have a hit, they were going down in perfect order.
Oklahoma State head coach Kenny Gajewski was asked if at any point did he let Maxwell know how well her debut was going?
"Are you crazy? Are you nuts? I wasn't going to tell her," laughed Gajewski, a former college baseball player that knows all too well the superstitions on telling pitchers they have a no-hitter. "I sure hope that nobody in our dugout did."
Maxwell finished off the perfect game, shortened to five innings because the Cowgirls pounded Florida A&M pitching for 21 runs. The soft-spoken Maxwell wasn't done for the day. She was the first Big 12 pitcher to open her career with a perfect game. Her effort was just the seventh perfect game in Oklahoma State history, but the day wasn't perfect.
Oklahoma State was tied in the bottom of the sixth later against 11th-ranked LSU. Maxwell came in and relieved Logan Simunek and got the final out to get the Cowgirls out of a jam, but then in the bottom of the seventh LSU freshman Taylor Pleasants got a hold of Maxwell's pitch and hit a walk-off home run to left-center. It was Pleasants' first college home run and it was the first allowed by Maxwell.
To her credit, Maxwell showed no more emotion than she did earlier in the day when she pitched the perfect game.
"She felt the whole array of highs and lows and handled them both very well," Gajewski added. "I think if you would have looked at her face after the first game where she was perfect you wouldn't have seen any difference when she had given up a game winning home run."
"Yes, I'm not one to show many emotions," Maxwell said in a very matter-of-fact way. "It sucked (the walk off against LSU), but that is a friend of mine and credit her and credit their team."
And really little blame or none to Maxwell. The pitch was exactly what was called for.
"As we went back in and looked, it was a pretty darn good pitch," Gajewski said of the Maxwell delivery. "Could she have throw it a little more off the plate, yeah. She executed it pretty much where she wanted it. You have to give their hitter (Pleasants) credit and she is a former teammate of Kelly's when they were eight-or-nine-years-old, so that's pretty neat. She just put a good swing on a really good pitch."
"Yes, I thought it was a good pitch, for sure," Maxwell added. "It was off the plate."
The guess here, and Gajewski said he is excited about the future is that there will be more wins in the circle for young Kelly Maxwell than there will be disappointments.
