Glacier graduate ready to make impact for Grizzlies

It’s black, knotted, nylon netting, pulled tight around galvanized steel pipe, that saves Melanie Meuchel’s life on a daily basis.

Okay, if not every day, at least every time the Montana softball team practices and its head coach pitches to the team’s hitters from 20 feet away. It’s not soft toss, but it’s not full speed either.

It’s a chance for the batters to get dialed in at the plate. No one is swinging and missing. The pitches are too perfect, too meatbally, and just slow enough that it’s line drive, line drive, line drive, often right back at Meuchel, whose only line of defense is that netting.

She’s been doing it for the entire history of the program, back to the first team’s first practice, in January 2015.

Most of the time the ball smacks the nylon and she’s right into her next pitch, without a second thought given. Pitch, repeat. Pitch, repeat. Pitch, repeat, metronome-like.

Then there are those hitters who are just a little bit different. The ball comes off their bat with a different sound and it reaches the nylon just a little bit faster, with a little more menace to it. It’s out to do some damage, and it gives Meuchel pause, perhaps to rethink this decision of hers.

Most players hit a ball that simply displaces the air around it. Then there are the hitters who make the type of contact and impact that the ball manages to push air ahead of it, so violent is the unseen collision of 3.8 inches of yellow sphere as it tears through space.

There are only a handful of players in program history who have reached that elevated status, that Meuchel doesn’t just hear ball off bat and ball into netting. She feels it. And she’s thankful that when she was looking through the catalog, she opted to buy the good stuff and didn’t cut corners.

“When it hits off the screen, you can actually feel the ball,” she says, meaning the tiny burst of air she gets hit with when the ball stops moving. The ball may have come to a sudden stop, but the air is still fleeing, unsettled, the aftereffect of some big-time exit velocity off the bat.

Kynzie Mohl makes Meuchel’s short list of those Grizzlies from whom that nylon netting has saved her life.

“She loves to hit and it’s really fun to watch. Sometimes I don’t enjoy standing behind a screen 20 feet away from her. We’ve had a couple others, when the ball gets off the bat, you know who it is,” says Meuchel.

Mohl’s dad, Dave, was an athlete himself, “good, not great,” he suggests, a serviceable enough basketball player that he took his hoop talents from Flathead High to Carroll for three seasons as a walk-on before spending his final year as a student assistant for then-coach John Driscoll.

“I just wanted to prove to myself that I could play basketball somewhere at the college level or at least make the team and enjoy it for a few more years, which I did,” he says.

He played some baseball back in the day as well, but he never had what his daughter has been blessed with.

“Her eye-hand coordination is unbelievable,” he says. “I was not a very good baseball hitter. I could pitch but I could not hit the damn ball.

“For her to be able to hit like she does, that part is a God-given talent. It’s not something you can improve on. You either have it or you don’t. Then her ability to put power into it is pretty amazing.”

She was the Gatorade Montana Player of the Year as a senior at Glacier High, after she batted .634 and had 18 home runs and 67 RBIs, numbers most players couldn’t come close to putting up in batting practice, much less against opposing pitchers wanting to shut down a dominant hitter.

“She has that it-factor,” says Meuchel. “Really good hand-eye coordination. When she strikes the ball, she provides a lot of power and pop off her bat.”

That’s what Meuchel had in mind last Friday at Sacramento State’s Shea Stadium, with Montana in a 0-0 game with Saint Mary’s in the bottom of the seventh.

After the first two batters were put out, McKenna Tjaden got hit by a pitch, putting the winning run on base.

Through the seven innings of Montana’s 3-0 season-opening win over San Jose State, Mohl had supported her team from the dugout. Same with the first 6 2/3 innings against Saint Mary’s.

Then Meuchel gave her a chance. “She came over and got me and said, ‘Grab your helmet and bat. This pitcher throws inside, and I know you can crush the inside pitch,’” says Mohl, who was about to make her collegiate debut.

“I was a little nervous. I just told myself to keep calm, it’s just an at-bat. Don’t try to overthink anything.”

It was just an at-bat, but bringing the heat was lefthanded senior pitcher Sofia Earle, who had allowed Montana only three hits to that point.

“I was pretty comfortable, but that pitcher threw a screwball like I’ve never seen before,” Mohl says. “She had a lot of good spin on it. On a righthanded batter, it moves in towards you.”

Her dad was in the stands watching. He was asked this week who was likely more nervous in that situation, him or his daughter. “I’m going to say her mom. I don’t really get nervous anymore when she plays. She’s got it handled. I’m very confident in what she can do.”

After all, he was the third-base coach when his daughter hit her first over-the-fence home run, at Playfair Park in Missoula. It wasn’t when she was in high school or even middle school. She was playing for a U12 team that her dad had started in Kalispell.

“I thought it was a foul ball. My first-base coach was like, Kynzie, that went over the fence. It was really cool. That was a special moment for my dad,” says Mohl, who got to high-five him when she rounded third base.

And the smile on his face, on a scale of 1 to 10? “Probably like 15.” Because he knew that home runs just don’t happen in U12 ball. They usually start showing up first at U14.

“It wasn’t a little home run,” her dad says. “She hit it about 50 feet beyond the fence. Fifty might be a little exaggeration, but at least 20 feet beyond the fence. It went a ways. It was a shock to most of the parents and coaches who were there.”

It would have made for a fun story if her first collegiate at-bat was a walk-off home run. Or even a run-scoring base hit. Or even if she had managed to get on base.

Instead she struck out swinging on a 2-2 pitch. “Screwball inside. It was nasty. It was a good experience to see the difference between high school and college, just how much better the pitching is,” she says.

“In my mind I was like, this is college now.” Then she throws on an addendum, just to let you know this is no overwhelmed freshman who is already doubting her abilities. “I’ll learn how to hit those balls.” It’s said not as wishful thinking but as matter of fact, like it will happen, and sooner rather than later.

Of Montana’s three hits before Mohl’s at-bat, two came from Cami Sellers, who, now in her fifth year, knows how to hit just about anything that comes her way, nasty screwball or other.

And if Sellers gives Mohl her early stamp of full approval, who are we to doubt?

“She’s been squaring some balls up,” Sellers said the weekend before the Nor Cal Kickoff. “She’s swinging hard and swinging at good pitches. She’s been hitting the ball really well.

“As a freshman, it’s hard to come in, but she’s not coming in timid. She’s been showing a lot of confidence in herself.”

It was the only appearance Mohl would make in five games in California, and you might think that would take a toll on a player who says, “I can’t even really remember” when asked about the last time she didn’t start and wasn’t in on the action from first pitch to final out.

She can thank her dad for her level-headed perspective and understanding of her new role, of going from being the big dog to a newbie on a team of them. It was the same talk he had with his daughter when she started playing high school softball after tearing up the travel-ball scene for years.

“We talked quite a bit about moving to the next level,” Dave says. “Find a place you’re able to help your team. It may not be on the field. It may be helping them in practice doing something.

“I always told her to push the older girls, because if you’re not pushing them, you’re not doing your job. You have to get them ready to play, and your shot will come, and it will probably come when you’re not expecting it, so you have to be ready at all times and have your head in the game.”

She joined the team as a catcher, which means she went into the fall at No. 3 on the depth chart behind Tjaden and Riley Stockton, two players who made all 49 starts at the position last season.

It’s not the only position she’s played over the years. She was placed at first base in her early days as a softball player, mostly because her coaches saw she was tall for her age and that’s what you do with the tallest player.

She would play catcher and third base for her travel-ball teams over the years. At Glacier High she pitched, caught and played shortstop.

But no matter where the game took her on the field, her heart remained behind the plate, waiting for her to return to her true love, squatting down, the umpire hovering behind, a bat-wielding hitter in front, the pitcher peering in, everyone behind her ready for the action that the catcher initiates.

The pitch gets called, the pitcher goes into her windup and it’s on.

“It keeps you a lot more in a game and I feel like it’s more of a competitive position to play, and I really like that,” she says.

“There are just a lot of good things to catching. I love when pitchers get strikeouts. I love throwing people out. I love when outfielders throw people out at home. It’s such an action-packed position that there’s never a dull moment.”

If anything was going to dissuade her from ever catching again, it would have been when she was 10. A girl back-swung when Mohl was coming up to throw the ball and the bat hit her finger, just one of a multitude of occupational hazards that come with the position.

It wasn’t long after that she was in the hospital crying. Because her finger had swollen so much that she couldn’t get her batting glove off? Because the bat had fractured a bone in her finger?

Not quite. “It was to get into the championship game. I just wanted to win the game. I’ll remember that forever.” The pain of a cracked bone in her finger was nothing compared to the pain of being forced to stand down and hoping her teammates could get it done in her absence.

If you’re sensing a grittiness to Mohl, you can understand why Meuchel had to have her in a Montana uniform. That trait has been the foundation of every Griz softball team since 2015. The players come and go. The grit factor remains. If players don’t arrive with it, they quickly pick it up, make it their own.

“She’s never been worried about getting dirty,” says her dad. “She likes being in the dirt and getting after it.”

It’s instructive to note that Mohl played four years of volleyball at Glacier High, which is the sport that falls more on the other end of the spectrum from softball. It’s competitive, which she needs from her sports, but it’s mostly clean, indoors and comes with teams separated by a net.

That’s fine, but sometimes a girl just needs to lay out an opponent to feel alive, you know? Collision at the plate, anyone?

“One time I got a perfect throw from my centerfielder and the girl wasn’t that much smaller than me. She hit me and went right down. I didn’t even move,” Mohl says. “She got up and glared at me.”

If you’re waiting for the rest of the story, that Mohl helped her to her feet and patted her on the back and choked back tears while apologizing, then carried that guilt with her for the rest of the game, we might be here for a while.

“Just doing my job,” is what she told her, and we can only hope she flicked her hand and wrist to shoo the player back to her dugout. The lesson: The plate is Kynzie Mohl’s. And everyone needs to know it.

And to think she needed her best friend’s urging to give the sport a shot in the first place, back when the family lived in Missoula. “Her dad coached a team. She said, why don’t you play on it?” Mohl adds, perhaps unnecessarily, “I loved it.

“Just the competitiveness of it. I love how it’s truly a team sport, that if one person has a good day, it matters, but you need your whole team to be there with you.”

Dave had gotten into coaching once his and Stacey’s three kids arrived, but it was baseball at first, the result of having two boys before Kynzie came along.

He quickly learned he needed to get up to speed on this new sport.

“Softball is nothing like baseball. Don’t try to coach it like baseball, because it’s not,” he says. “My first year we played Little League, let’s just say I got schooled quite a few times. It was a good learning experience on how to coach softball versus not trying to coach like it’s baseball.”

“The delayed steal. Back in the younger ages, girls can steal quite a bit, and the delayed steal of a girl on third when your catcher is not getting it back properly to your pitcher. I got schooled in an all-star game pretty good by a Butte coach. I’ll never forget that.”

He got better, his daughter too. Most parents of children who go on to become Division I athletes have that ah-ha moment, when they see their kid do something that maybe none of their peers are doing, separated by balance, strength, agility, speed, something that requires a double take.

Mohl never provided one. “It was just the development that she was able to make over the years versus the other girls she played with. She was always able to push herself and able to excel. She just progressed every year and got better at something,” her dad says.

“She’s not one to sit on the side. She wants to be in everything. In order to do that, she pushes herself, and she was able to get better at every level.”

She started playing for the Montana Avalanche when the family lived in Missoula. They moved to Kalispell at the conclusion of her fourth-grade year, both for her dad’s work and because it’s where both sets of grandparents live.

It’s also where Dave and Stacey first connected, the night of a school dance when she went over and asked him to join her. He says he knew her friends but had no idea who she was at the time. Didn’t matter. It was game over.

When Mohl turned 16, she returned to her roots and rejoined the Avalanche. Her dad started coaching with Brent Weisgram and Clint Hardy, which brings a fun dynamic to this year’s team.

All three of their daughters play for the Grizzlies. Brooklyn Weisgram is a senior, Mohl and Grace Hardy are freshmen.

“It’s pretty awesome,” says Dave. “Being able to watch the girls progress and follow them. Now to be able to play college, it’s pretty rewarding as a parent and a coach to see that.

“To make it to the next level is hard enough. To be able to play for a Division I school in the state where you live, it couldn’t have worked out any better.”

“It’s like my dad told me, you’re getting the gang back together,” says Kynzie. “They all loved coaching together. It’s cool they get to see their daughters on the same team.”

Mohl was living in Kalispell and in the sixth grade the spring Montana made its debut on the softball field in 2015.

Until then, playing softball at the Division I level meant going out of state. There was just no clear path to get there. There were no appealing options nearby, no carrots to chase.

Then Montana announced it was starting a program. Then Jamie Pinkerton was hired and brought on Meuchel as an assistant coach. And springs have never been quite the same. It filled a void only a handful of people knew was there.

Now it’s hard to image Grizzly Athletics without it.

“We always talked about it. Hey, wouldn’t it be great if you could play for the Griz someday,” says Dave. “You dream about it, but it’s a dream. But as she kept getting older, that dream became more of a possibility than ever.”

That possibility became reality when Kynzie Mohl stepped into the box last Friday to face a screwball-throwing pitcher like she’s never seen before.

She got her one at-bat, and that was it for the tournament. But don’t think she wasn’t valuable in Montana going 3-2 and the Grizzlies being a couple of clutch hits away from being 5-0.

It takes a village, right? In this case it takes 18 players, the full roster, not just those who happen to be on the active lineup card at any given moment.

“You’re not complete with nine. You’re not complete with 10. You’re complete with the roster you have,” says Meuchel.

“Throughout the season, some get more opportunities than others, but it’s trying to get every single person to grow, get experience, get opportunities to be able to complete our team.”

Mohl’s time will come, slowly at first. A pinch-hit opportunity here. Maybe starting a game at DP there. In the meantime, she’ll keep driving balls into that nylon, giving Meuchel pause in the moment but a jolt of excitement for what she knows is coming when Mohl’s time truly arrives.

Sign up for our newsletter and get the best of the Beacon delivered every day to your inbox.

Over three days the Salish and Kootenai celebrated the restoration of the Bison Range to tribal ownership allowing them to manage the resources and wildlife for the first time in 112 years

Author, illustrator and Flathead resident Jonathan Fetter-Vorm reflects on the 10-year anniversary of his debut book, a graphic history of the first atomic bomb

With no general election challenger, four Republican candidates square off in a primary for a seat as the highest elected official in Flathead County

If you enjoy stories like this one, please consider joining the Flathead Beacon Editor’s Club. For as little as $5 per month, Editor’s Club members support independent local journalism and earn a pipeline to Beacon journalists.

© 2022 Flathead Beacon, All Rights Reserved. Use of this site is subject to the Flathead Beacon's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.