Elisea Wiegand doesn’t struggle to provide an answer all that often.
Whether that’s in the classroom where she owns a 4.0 GPA, or, on the field, where she recently pitched a career-defining win against Pleasant Valley — the top-ranked team in the section which was on a 12-game win streak — in an all-important end-of-season clash that vaulted Foothill into first place in the Eastern Athletic League.
That sort of stuff has come to be expected from the soon-to-be University of Maryland star. But in a recent interview with the Record Searchlight, sitting side-by-side with first-year coach Tayler Walker, one question left Wiegand needing Walker for assistance.
‘When you’re not playing softball or focusing on school, what do you enjoy doing?’
“That’s a hard question for her,” Walker said. “When she’s not playing softball or doing her homework, she’s in her batting cage hitting softballs.”
It’s relaxing, Wiegand said. And it’s the type of characteristic often seen in the best — an obsession and love for your craft, each of which the high school softball phenom seems to possess.
She’s the stern yet tender veteran voice on the latest rendition of storied Foothill softball, which has just one senior in Wiegand and a pool of promising underclassmen. Her ‘lead with love’ disposition, as Walker referred to it, has this team playing beyond its years.
“I think being in that role is so different from just being a player on the team,” Walker said. “They all respect her, but it took a few weeks for them to get to that point and she had to show them that she loves them and cares for them to truly respect her and what she says.”
Most of all, though, she’s the catalyst of a team that now has an argument for best in the North State. It’s a club that recently earned its biggest win yet of a 22-win campaign — the most since 2017, when Walker headed a team that went 62-4-1 in consecutive seasons — defeating acclaimed Pleasant Valley behind Wiegand’s commanding performance. She threw for seven innings, allowed three hits and struck out 17 against a team that was averaging double-digit runs over its last ten outings.
That performance from Wiegand came after back-to-back no-hitters, her third and fourth of the season, and a career-high 31-strikeout game over Red Bluff. She’s pitched in 20 of the Cougars’ 27 games, starting in all but one, boasting a resume that is among the best in the state. The right-hander’s 245 strikeouts rank as the eighth-best in California, doing so while pitching the second-fewest innings of anyone ranked ahead.
The twist, though? Wiegand may be the best dual-threat player of them all. She’s one of just three players statewide to have more than 240 strikeouts while also hitting at least seven home runs. Wiegand’s .525 batting average isn’t quite the blistering .681 that placed second in the section last season, but it’ll still do for a team-best for the second-straight year.
The four-year varsity starter, who began her high school career at Anderson as a freshman and sophomore, has 139 career hits, 120 RBIs, 33 home runs and 801 strikeouts — despite having to sit out half of her junior season due to CIF transfer rules. The only time Anderson has won a league game over the past seven seasons was when Wiegand was a part of the team.
That’s a strong portfolio for someone who didn’t start focusing on softball until fifth grade, and only began pitching just before her freshman year, out of pandemic lockdown-related ‘boredom’. In fact, Wiegand said she favored basketball more growing up.
“I was just always bigger than everyone and I could just push people around, and it was really fun,” she said.
Wiegand’s dad, James, who is an avid softball player himself, saw his daughter’s potential on the diamond from a young age, though. Elisea said that he bought her a glove when she was 1 year old — it’s a glove she still uses in game play to this day.
“My dad is a very real person,” Wiegand said. “He knew I was going to be a softball player and he told me, ‘You’re a great basketball player, but you could be an even better softball player.’”
It’s simple to see now why Wiegand was such a coveted prospect, one that, aside from Maryland, received offers from other notable universities. Ivy League’s Princeton and Cornell were in the mix, along with the California, Berkeley, each of which is ranked as a top-10 academic institution.
“What goes on in her head is not common for people nowadays,” Walker said. “Any situation we’re in, she’s saying something intelligent and we’re like ‘Oh my god, how does she think of these things?’”
It was her standout play that made this all possible, but her prowess as a student-athlete played a role. She has big aspirations in that regard, too. Wiegand plans to pursue a career as an orthodontist when her softball days come to an end.
She’ll be able to start her dentistry program as a fourth-year student at Maryland, something that helped make the decision of where to play at the next level easier. Wiegand said her family was won over on their official visit to College Park led by Terps second-year coach Lauren Karn, despite initially favoring Wiegand to attend a more education-oriented school.
Karn told Wiegand that she wants her to pitch and hit at the next level while playing her usual non-pitching position — first base — just as she’s done in high school. Wiegand said that she fit the mold of what Karn told her she was looking for in a player.
Perhaps the best aspect of the recruitment process is that it came together by chance. Wiegand plays on a prestigious travel ball team, Lady Magic Walling, whose 20-person roster has a total of 17 Division l commits. Wiegand and Co. were taking part in PGF Nationals in Huntington Beach, a high-level high school softball showcase, when she was noticed by Maryland.
“They were there to watch the pitcher on the other team,” Wiegand said. “They saw me pitch a couple innings and saw me have a couple at-bats and told my recruiting coordinator they wanted to bring me out on a visit.”
She won’t leave her school in Palo Cedro — a town with just over 3,500 people — until August, when she’ll travel nearly 3,000 miles to her home away from home for the next four years.
“I’m excited, but also nervous,” Wiegand said. “I’m really close with my family, so that’s going to be a big change for me, but I’ve met most of the softball team already and I really enjoy them.”
But there’s business to be handled before all that. Walker will lean on Wiegand in the postseason and hope to see her produce to the degree she’s capable of. If that happens, the sky’s the limit for this Foothill team.
“She’ll be pitching every playoff game,” Walker said.
This article originally appeared on Redding Record Searchlight: From one coast to another: Power Four program awaits Foothill softball star Elisea Wiegand
Reporting by Andrew Edwards/Special to the Record Searchlight / Redding Record Searchlight
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
