SOFTBALL
STRONG RESPONSE
After a strenuous offseason, Katie Prebble returned as a big contributor for Gamecocks By Josh Hyber | Staff writer • Photos by Allen Sharpe and SC Athletics
34 KATIE PREBBLE
T
he softball-related portion of Katie Prebble’s exit meeting with Beverly Smith after last season was relatively short and simple. “Katie, what do you want?” asked Smith, the South Carolina head coach. “What do you want for yourself for next year? What do you see for yourself?” “I want to be a starter,” Prebble, who hit .156 with 13 starts in 57 games, responded. “I remember, at the end of the season, it really hitting me that I wanted to do so much more for the team and for myself,” Prebble told Spurs & Feathers before the Gamecocks entered SEC play in March. At the time, the team’s designated player had started all 17 games and had a .289 batting average. Among regular contributors, she was first on the team in home runs (six), RBI (23) and slugging (.711) and third in OPS (1.076). “Katie Prebble is playing fantastic right now,” Smith said at the time. “You can see her, in-game, making adjustments from at-bat to at-bat. She’s smart, she’s strong and she’s having a lot of fun right now. “You can just see that every time she steps in the box she’s a threat.” When Prebble told Smith this past May that she wanted to start, the coach simply said, “OK.” There was no holding her back. So Prebble went to work. She interned this past summer at a 301 Strong, a high-end gym near her home in Pomfret, Md. “I was the young intern they made do all the awful workouts,” she said. “Insane workouts. A lot of crazy stuff.” Like pushing sleds on concrete. “Don’t ever do that,” she advises. Prebble went from taking classes to teaching them. “We also had Strong Man, which is another branch of heavy lifting,” she said. “And yeah, they had me doing all their little competitions.” She returned to South Carolina and aced the team’s preseason fitness tests. “I think I ran everything in the shortest amount of time that we had groups for,” she said. “I think I was in the ‘fast’ group immediately. That’s when I realized the change, because I could not do that last year.” On the field, hitting and fielding have become “a lot easier” because she rarely has soreness, aches and pains. She crushed a home run on opening day and five days later had a five-RBI game that included another home run. Five days later she had another home run in a four-RBI game. “Katie has been so clutch for us. She has hit balls farther than I have ever seen hit,” Gamecock senior shortstop Kenzi Maguire said. “She always goes up with the intent to do damage. She brings this calm confidence
MARCH 2020
