‘She’s a triple-threat.’ Record-setting Kayla Kowalik leads by example for UK softball.
Kayla Kowalik was there for the biggest moment in Kentucky softball history, even though she wasn’t yet a high school student.
Kentucky’s lone trip to the Women’s College World Series came in May 2014, as a 50-win UK team reached the second round of the WCWS at the iconic USA Softball Hall of Fame Stadium in Oklahoma City.
Kowalik was there as a fan, without the knowledge she would be recruited from south-central Texas to Lexington, and then put together one of the best softball careers in UK history.
“Every kid who’s ever played the sport and who’s now playing in college has the dream to go to OKC, has the dream to play in the Women’s College World Series,” Kowalik said in February, before her senior season began. “I think even for us, the fact that we have dipped our toes in the water, every year going to super regionals and not quite making it, I think that makes us hungrier than ever. ... We are competitive and aggressive enough that I think we have a great shot this year.”
Few players around the country are better positioned than Kowalik to lead their teams to that kind of lasting postseason success in 2022.
Kowalik has been a four-year starter at Kentucky as a catcher, handling a variety of pitchers who have come and gone, including this season’s seven-player pitching staff.
She’s been a staple at the top of the Kentucky batting order and entered this season with a career .419 average and 197 hits, including a standout junior season in 2021 that featured a .495 average with 100 hits.
As a senior in 2022, Kowalik set the career runs scored record at UK (she currently has 201 all-time runs scored) and is hitting .404 (second on the team) with a team-leading 61 hits as UK has three regular season games left.
Kowalik’s experience and instincts have positioned her as leader for the Wildcats, something necessary as Kentucky attempts to return to the WCWS after being eliminated in a super regional in the last four NCAA Tournaments.
“All she understands is winning,” UK softball head coach Rachel Lawson said of Kowalik. “She’s able to take the experiences that she sees because she’s brilliant, and then adds it to our team and adds it to her game in hopes of ultimately getting to Oklahoma City, which is the main thing that you do when you come to Kentucky.”
‘You knew that she was special’
Lawson gives credit for the discovery of Kowalik to associate head coach Kristine Himes, who first saw Kowalik play during a travel softball tournament in Colorado when Kowalik was in middle school.
“Already at that age, she was already bigger, stronger, faster than everyone else and had a presence of leadership, like a 20-year old,” Lawson recalled. “Once you saw her just one time, you knew that she was special.”
Kowalik remembers her recruiting process as a time of indecision.
She didn’t know which career or major to pursue. She just knew that she wanted to leave Texas, where she grew up in New Braunfels (a San Antonio suburb).
“I kind of got lucky that Coach Lawson, great saleswoman, she sold this place to me and it’s been home ever since,” Kowalik said.
Kowalik’s stellar on-field play has endeared her to fans at John Cropp Stadium and across the commonwealth.
She received votes to be named 2021 Kentucky Sports Figure of the Year.
The appreciation fans have for Kowalik is evident following every Kentucky softball game, at home or away.
Crowds of fans line the barricades at John Cropp Stadium in the Barnhart Family Athletics Complex following each UK game to get autographs from players, and Kowalik is often the one most in demand.
This was even true following Kentucky’s shutout win at Louisville in April, as fans lined up outside the UK dugout to take photos with Kowalik, who has been called up to the United States National Team for a summer competition in Canada.
“She gets that all the time. It’s before games, during games, after games,” Lawson said. “I think she loves it and I think she’s an incredible ambassador for the sport and she’s great for the kids.”
Kowalik crucial to Kentucky’s success
Kowalik’s style of play, both offensively at the plate and behind the dish as Kentucky’s regular catcher, has even made a fan out of Lawson.
“What I like the most about Kayla is I like watching her. I like watching her at-bats. I like watching how her mind works, just the fan in me loves watching her play softball whether she gets a hit or not,” Lawson explained. “My expectation is that she just continues to be the same person that she is. My hope is always that other people take on her qualities and her characteristics.”
What has allowed Kowalik to bat above .400 for her nearly four-year UK career?
“I definitely have a more aggressive type of approach . . . but I also think that I’m very sporadic in the things that I do,” Kowalik said. “Sometimes I don’t even know what I’m going to do until I step foot in the box and then I’m like, ‘All right, this sounds like it will be a good idea.’ And I follow through with it. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.”
“She’s a triple-threat. She can get on many different ways. She can hit it over the fence. She can hit it hard through the infield. She can bunt. She can do all sorts of things,” Lawson added. “At first we found confidence in her ability to lead our offense. Then through that, everybody’s seeing her confidence as a leader on the field as a catcher because all eyes are on her.”
Catching is a less-quantifiable metric to evaluate Kowalik’s greatness, but Lawson has a firsthand perspective on her performances behind the plate.
Lawson was a college catcher at UMass in the mid-1990s, and said Kowalik has noticeably improved her catching and game management abilities behind the plate this season, despite having to manage a seven-player pitching staff with limited Southeastern Conference experience.
“She’s obviously receiving well and doing a great job with the umpires and managing that part, but she’s also helping keep (UK pitchers) calm and in the game,” Lawson said. “Calling timeouts when she needs to call a timeout, really helping them behind the dish so they can throw a quality game.”
One of the pitchers who has benefited from Kowalik’s presence is freshman Alexia Lacatena, an Olympian last summer with the Italian national team, but still someone who needed a guiding presence while adjusting to SEC softball.
“She’s just one of the best in the game, so having someone like that to give me advice and help me out . . . is just really an honor,” Lacatena said of Kowalik. “She’s done it before so many times with so many different pitchers. Her being able to adjust with me and work with me, it’s been great and very, very helpful.”
Kentucky’s overall pitching statistics aren’t overwhelming.
But Kowalik has been a major factor this season in holding the rotation together well enough, both in games and practice bullpen sessions.
“You’ll never see a championship-caliber team that doesn’t have a great defensive catcher,” Lawson said. “She definitely deserves quite a bit of credit because if you don’t enjoy who you’re throwing to, if they’re not doing a good job receiving your pitches and you don’t have confidence in the person behind the dish, you don’t feel confident throwing the ball. I think that just her presence and her talent has really helped our pitching staff this season.”
Kowalik looks toward the future
Should she elect to use it, Kowalik has an extra, fifth year of college eligibility due to the NCAA’s coronavirus extension.
Before the 2022 season, Kowalik said her plan was to use that fifth year, contingent upon getting into graduate school.
“I love this game too much to not have an opportunity to take it,” she said.
Last week, Kowalik told the Herald-Leader she was in the process of finishing her graduate school application.
“It’s something on my mind, but it’s not too stressful,” Kowalik said, confirming that she would be attending graduate school at UK.
Kowalik didn’t go through Kentucky’s Senior Day ceremonies last weekend against Mississippi State, and it was announced to the crowd that she would be returning for a fifth season.
Even though she’s planning to play more games at John Cropp Stadium beyond both this weekend and the possible games Kentucky could host in the NCAA Tournament her approach never changes.
“I’m approaching (potential final home games) the same way I’ve approached every season,” Kowalik said. “I like to take every game in like it’s an important big game, like it’s the last game.”
Plenty of others with Kentucky softball will be glad she plans to stick around as well.
“She has the mindset that she has big dreams. She wants things and she’s able to receive coaching at an extremely high level in intense situations,” Lawson said. “She knows what to do with the information and I think her ability to do that is one of the reasons she’s such a great player.”
This story was originally published May 2, 2022 at 6:00 AM.
