She got out of class and showed up to Thursday practice as the team was finishing warmups at 2:15 p.m. She raced down the stairs in her flats, threw cleats on and immediately came across the media.
“I’m sorry, I’m not very good at this,” she cautioned before reporters started firing questions.
Freshman pitcher Paige Lowary is still learning how it all works.
But seven appearances into her collegiate career, she’s already becoming one of college softball’s rising stars. Talking to her, you’d never know it, but Lowary’s teammates are making sure to remind her how good she is.
“We get so fired up (for her),” senior Angela Randazzo said. “We walk into the dining hall and are like, ‘OK, Pitcher of the Week,’ and she hates it. She hates getting that attention. But we are so excited for her as a freshman to come in and kill it.”
And they have every reason to be excited. Their 18-year-old ace from Dallas Center, Iowa, beat No. 13 Arizona and Texas in two of her first five starts, earning the title of Southeastern Conference Pitcher of the Week.
The script looks familiar to the team’s upperclassmen, as now-sophomore pitcher Tori Finucane had a freshman campaign of her own to remember last year. But while this is nothing new to them, that doesn’t mean it hasn’t surprised some of the team’s veterans.
“I knew she was good,” Randazzo said. “But I didn’t expect her to come out and just act like she’s one of the leaders on the team. To be a freshman and take that lead role, that’s amazing.”
Junior Emily Crane was likewise unsure of what the Tigers were getting with Lowary. But she’s not complaining about the freshman’s early success.
“I love it,” Crane said. “Her coming in, I didn’t know how she was going to throw. Then I watched her pitch and was like, ‘OK, now we have another really great pitcher.’”
Crane and Randazzo both expressed their excitement to watch Lowary grow, but if there’s any teammate to credit for her success, it’s Finucane.
“She is very humble and very poised on the mound,” Lowary said of her sophomore counterpart. “A very good role model. She’s exactly what Mizzou softball should be. Last year, she was going through everything I’m going through this year, especially with the early success, so I definitely talk to her about everything I have problems with.”
But being a mentor is no chore for Finucane. She loves every minute of it.
“I see Tori on the bench, and she is cheering her on just like the rest of us even though coach is telling her to relax,” Randazzo said.
Perhaps what makes it so easy for the sophomore to take Lowary under her wing is how much their personalities mesh. It’s apparent to their teammates that the two aces are peas in a pod.
“They’re very alike,” Randazzo said. “Tori hates the spotlight, too. But they’re good. They just keep calm, cool and collected. Tori shares the knowledge she’s had the past year, and I think it’s helping them both out. They’re a dynamic duo.”
For her part, Finucane said Lowary isn’t the only one that’s benefited from the relationship. As a freshman, the righty handled the team’s starting duties exclusively but expects this year to be much less taxing with Lowary in the mix.
“(It takes pressure off me) mentally and physically,” Finucane said. “And she’s amazing. It’s just really fun to watch her.”
Unlike some of the team’s veterans, Finucane said, she wasn’t the least bit surprised at what Lowary has been able to do up to this point.
“I was expecting it,” she said. “I thought she was just going to go in there and kill it, and that’s exactly what she did.”
Having that additional dominant option in the circle could ultimately be a difference-maker for Missouri come tournament time, and the early success already has players thinking about making some noise later in the year.
“We have three really good, quality pitchers,” Crane said. “We fell short of that the last couple of years with injuries. If we can keep them all healthy, I think we have a really good chance to do good things.”
