In the backyard of a home in Pleasant Hope, a plank of wood lies nailed to the ground near a vegetable garden, carved to be the size of the rubber on a pitching mound.
Sixty feet ahead, there’s a cavity in the grass, left from something substantial that stood there for years. Neither is eye-catching, and most would probably walk by without a second glance, but for Zoey Mullings, there are memories within and beyond that sixty-foot stretch of her past.
“I can picture it right now,” Mullings said. “It was out behind my old house. My dad cut me out a mound of wood, nailed it to the ground, and we started practicing off of that. Then, he had this bucket he put right in front of the garden, so I tried to pitch into the bucket and not hit any of the tomatoes or anything.”
Mullings left that made-from-scratch pitching school behind after eighth grade when her family moved from Pleasant Hope to Strafford. But the plank, and those whiffle balls, did their job.
A season to remember
Strafford finished the regular season undefeated, and Mullings was the big reason why. The sophomore was a perfect 18-0 in the regular season, striking out 119 in 90 innings behind a sparkling 1.24 ERA. Those all-state pitching stats were coupled with a .556 average and a team-best 28 RBIs.
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“[Softball] came real naturally to me,” Mullings said. “When you tell me how to do something, it just clicks right away. I play basketball, too. My dad would show me how to shoot, and I’d get it right away. That brought a lot of confidence. It’s hard to explain.”
See it. Do it. Sounds like Mullings could be a classical musician prodigy in the making.
Or not.
“Yeah, I tried the piano and it didn’t work. I’ve actually tried the trumpet too and I was so bad. Then the flute. I wasn’t good at all.”
But when you’re as good as Mullings is at delivering some chin music with her arm or her bat, you can be forgiven for not being able to play "Clair de Lune."
“We used to have this pole from a basketball hoop, and there was a ball on a string attached to it. I’d throw it around, and if I hit it hard enough, it’d go really fast and go back around. Then, one day, I hit it so much it actually broke and flew into the house.”
That basketball hoop got its money’s worth, too. Last season, Mullings helped lead Strafford to a state championship, scoring a team-high 13 points off the bench in their 50-46 win in the Class 3 title game over Saxony Lutheran.
“Winning the championship was crazy," she said. "It was so awesome. I don’t know how to describe it. I was just jumping up and down. I couldn’t fathom what we just did. It was so great. So crazy.”
Mullings gets wide-eyed talking about that moment, a moment she’d like to duplicate in softball.
“I love both sports and I love the people I play with in both, but I think a softball championship might mean a bit more to me because I’m more natural at it.”
A natural hitter. A natural pitcher. And a natural leader.
“I’m the biggest cheerleader you’re ever going to meet on the field,” Mullings, who was named a team captain as a freshman, said.
“I’m always trying to boost everyone up. I want to go 110 percent all the time. My demeanor is to go out there and work my butt off and try to win the game. If someone is down, I feel like it’s my job to say something silly to make them laugh so they can focus on playing again.”
It was Mullings that was lifted up after a no-hitter this year over Clever. But the sophomore was so focused on the game, her teammates’ reactions scared her.
“I had no idea I pitched a no-hitter,” Mullings said. “I’ve gotten to the point where my defense is so good, I kind of walk off the mound because I know they’ve got it. Then, my teammates came out running and yelling and I thought someone made an error. I was so scared. I think they all knew except me.”
While Mullings blew her own expectations out of the water last season, she knows it wasn’t enough. Her once-undefeated Indians were eliminated 13-9 in the district tournament by eventual state champion Mt. Vernon, a team Strafford had bested twice during the season. With two years left at Strafford, the self-professed natural has one goal in mind: a championship.
“I used to go out with my friends and play in the backyard and talk about being state champions,” she said. “We’ve always had that dream.”
A dream that started with a plank of wood and a bucket.
“I go back there because my grandpa owns the subdivision,” Mullings said of the backyard she grew up in. “I mow the lawn, and I still see it. It’s still sitting there. Oh my gosh, I can just picture everything like it just happened. It’s crazy how it’s still there.”
