NEW PALESTINE — She ran halfway up the first-base line, dove, and made a miraculous catch of a foul pop up.
New Palestine’s softball team was in Connersville that day.
Junior catcher Aglaia Rudd made the highlight-reel grab of the foul ball. It was already her third putout in foul territory.
All were impressive, but the third and most spectacular of her foul outs compelled one of the game’s umpires to ask New Pal coach Ed Marcum a question about his standout backstop.
“He said, ‘Is there anything she can’t do?’” Marcum recalled. “I said, ‘No, not really. She does it all.’”
“Then he asked, ‘Can she hit?’”
Rudd came up that inning and promptly hit a home run.
“He looked at me and said, ‘I guess she answered my question.’ I thought that was good timing,” Marcum chuckled.
Rudd is the 2022 Daily Reporter Hancock County Softball Athlete of the Year.
The brilliant play from Rudd, who has committed to play collegiately at Purdue Fort Wayne, was commonplace during the 2022 season. The Dragons went 23-4-1. Two of the losses came to undefeated Class 4A state champion Roncalli.
Her stat line shows a .506 batting average with 15 doubles, seven home runs and 48 RBI. She had a .984 fielding percentage and was named second team all-state for Class 3A/4A by the Softball Coaches Association of Indiana. She was also selected All-Hoosier Heritage Conference.
While the numbers and accolades are overly impressive, the number that stands out as equally— or more remarkable — is a zero.
That’s how many times she struck out in 98 plate appearances.
Her stretch of not making a quick turn back to the dugout includes games hitting against Gatorade National Player of the Year Keagan Rothrock. The Roncalli star, who led her team to back-to-back state titles, struck out 382 batters in 170.1 innings this season.
Rudd went 2-for-4 with a run scored and a pair of RBI in five plate appearances against the Roncalli ace. In fact, in a regular season game against the Royals, Rudd took a Rothrock pitch out of the park and had two of the Dragons six hits.
“I am pretty sure I have never had a player been able to do anything like that,” Marcum said of Rudd going the season without fanning.
“I knew it toward the end of the year, but I didn’t want to say anything. We were going into that last game against Roncalli,” Marcum added. “She puts herself in good position, doesn’t swing at bad pitches, and is aggressive early in counts.”
Rudd has a great approach to the plate. Like her coach said, she prefers to be the aggressor, but she’s not going for home runs, though sometimes it happens. Rudd is a line-drive hitter that can find gaps.
“When I am ready to hit, I just think about putting the ball in play, whether it’s opposite side when there’s a runner on first or third, I’m trying to get that run in,” Rudd said. “You don’t always have to hit home runs to do well. You can hit gap shots. You can hit grounders to the opposite side. You can hit grounders in the gaps. Anything I see that can help my team, that’s what I want to do.”
In 2020, Rudd was the only freshman to make New Pal’s varsity roster. The Dragons were seeking a fourth straight state title, but COVID-19 came and wiped the season out.
She played her first games as a 2021 sophomore. The Dragons went 28-1 before falling to Roncalli in the sectional championship game. Rudd was a standout on that team, too. She jumped right in and was the team’s starting catcher, hitting .367 and leading the team in doubles with 10.
“I started catching and I had to learn the coaching staff’s ways quickly because my freshman year I couldn’t,” Rudd said.
You could never tell Rudd got a late start.
Marcum said he had six girls on the 2022 roster that can catch, and he’d feel comfortable with any of them behind the plate, but Rudd is the best of that group, and the best of the ones before that, too.
“Aglaia is probably the best I’ve had and I’ve had a lot of great catchers through the years,” the six-time state champion coach said. “If you look at it overall, maybe I’ve had some catchers that were as good at blocking or maybe not as good at other parts of the game. If you take the complete package, as far as catchers go, she’s just incredible and a great kid to go along with it.
“She’s a team leader, too. I’d see times when we were struggling, she’d pull the group together. Even though a junior — and I had a great senior class — she was kind of the one that would step it up when it came to leadership. She’s not loud and overbearing, but a leader by example. When she needs to get the team together and get them focused, that’s what she did.”
Rudd’s a great player, and one the Dragons will have for one more season. It’s a season his standout catcher doesn’t take for granted.
Being part of the Dragon softball program has been a goal of her since watching the team play when she was younger.
“From my freshman year and when I was little I always wanted to play on that (varsity) field and for coach Marcum and the coaching staff,” Rudd said. “I watched Audrey East (our JV coach) when she played. She was my role model. She was a catcher. I want to play like her and be like her and play on that field. It’s an honor to this day.”
