COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.— Led by RMAC Player of the Year
Ashley Bradford and RMAC Pitcher of the Year
Paige Adair, the Colorado Mesa University Maverick softball team placed a co-league high six players on the First Team All-RMAC squad, announced Friday morning by conference officials after a vote of the conference's 12 head softball coaches.
The Mavericks also had two second team selections and had two home-town products earn first team honors.
Bradford's selection extends a run of now eight consecutive seasons that a CMU player has received the conference's top award.
Adair was also named as the Pitcher of the Year for the second consecutive year and becomes the first Maverick hurler to ever win it twice. CMU has now had the Pitcher of the Year selection in three straight and four of the last five completed seasons.
Joining them on the first team were sophomore catcher
Ally Distler, freshman second baseman
Myah Arrieta, redshirt junior outfielder
Brandi Haller and redshirt junior utility/pitcher
Ellie Smith, last year's RMAC Player of the Year. Redshirt juniors
Nicole Christensen and
Lauren Wedman were also second team selections at the third base and outfield positions, respectively.
In 2022, The Mavericks won their sixth consecutive RMAC title with a 35-3 conference mark.
The Mavericks hit .385 as a team and held their conference opponents to a .175 batting average, an incredible 210 point difference. The Mavericks out-scored their RMAC foes by a combined 327-59 margin and had a team ERA of 1.48.
The Mavs also hit seven times as many home runs (85) as their RMAC opponents (15) and had an equally gigantic sized difference in doubles (84-14) in their 38 conference games.
Bradford, a Tucson, Arizona native, had a break-out redshirt junior season, finishing the regular season third in the RMAC for home runs (14), fourth in slugging (.801) and third for OPS (1.270). She also ranked eight with her .469 on-base percentage and was fifth in the RMAC for runs scored with a team-high 49.
Adair, a fifth-year senior from Aztec, New Mexico, threw two no-hitters this season and led the RMAC with a 1.21 ERA and opposing batting average of .130, a mark that is 73 points lower than Smith, who ranked second in the RMAC for both categories.
Despite missing a month of the season due to injury, Adair also recorded 123 strikeouts to rank fourth in the RMAC and went 16-2 during the season. She also leads all of Division II, giving up just more than three hits per seven innings.
Smith, who was also a First Team All-RMAC and consensus First Team All-American in 2021, posted a 15-2 record from within the circle and ranked second in the RMAC with her 1.47 ERA and .203 opposing batting average. The Riverside, California native also allowed just two home runs as a pitcher and hit 11 herself at the plate. S
he also banged out ten doubles and was tied for sixth in the RMAC with 44 RBIs while hitting at .346 clips. Smith also slugged .692, offensively.
Distler, a Second Team All-RMAC honoree as a freshman, led the RMAC with 17 regular season home runs to rank amongst the nation's top-10 sluggers. She was also tied for sixth in the conference with 44 RBIs and was ranked fifth in slugging percentage (.792) and tenth for OPS (1.174). A Littleton, Colorado native, Distler was named as the RMAC's Academic Player of the Year last month and gunned down 62.5 percent (10-16) of the would-be base-stealers that attempted to steal against her while conceding just six stolen bases throughout the season.
Arrieta and Haller both hail from Grand Junction.
Arrieta, a product of Grand Junction Central High School, finished the regular season hitting .387 to rank second on the team and just outside the conference's top-10 for batting average. She also had an OPS of 1.052 and recorded 18 hits for extra-bases and 16 multiple-hit games. Arrieta also delivered 33 RBIs and was third on the Maverick squad for runs scored with 39.
Haller, a Fruita Monument High School graduate, led the conference in slugging percentage at .861, largely because of her 13-home run total, tied for fifth most in the conference. She was also second in the RMAC for OPS at the end of the regular season and was ninth for on-base percentage at .462.
Wedman picked up her third career All-RMAC honor is as many opportunities. The Tucson, Arizona native was a First Team pick and consensus First Team All-American in 2021 and put together another solid season in 2022, hitting .378 during conference play with a 1.139 OPS.
She also ranked fifth for walks (25) and tenth for runs scored (41) throughout the entire regular season after earning honorable mention all-conference plaudits as a true freshman in 2019.
Christensen was recognized for the second consecutive year after receiving honorable mention all-conference honors in 2021. She finished the regular season with a .388 batting average to lead the team and rank tenth in the RMAC. She also ranked ninth in the RMAC for slugging percentage (.736) and was tied for tenth in the conference for home runs with a dozen.
The Vancouver, Washington native also ranked ninth in the RMAC for OPS (1.184) and had an on-base percentage of .448 during the regular season.
