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Rough Timing / East grad was enjoying best, healthiest softball season when it was ended

May 5, 2020

Columbus East graduate Elyse Babb takes a swing at a pitch for Butler against Illinois-Chicago March 27, 2019. Brent Smith | Butler Athletics

After three frustrating, injury-riddled softball seasons, Elyse Babb was finally having a year to remember.

Not only was the redshirt junior catcher from Columbus East enjoying by far her best season at the plate in her college career, her Butler University team was having its best season since she arrived on campus.

“As a team, we had been playing so well,” Babb said. “I know we had won more games already so far than we had all of last season. We were doing so well going into the conference season. We were really working as a team and finding ways to win one-run, two-run games.”

On March 12, the season came to an abrupt end when the NCAA canceled all of its winter sports tournaments and all of spring sports.

Butler was in Florida playing in the Madiera Beach Spring Games when the team received the news.

“I’ll never forget it,” Babb said. “We were coming back from a game, and were hearing that all of the teams in the tournament we were playing in were dropping out. The next day, or even that night, the Big East tweeted out that all competition was canceled. The coach (Scott Hall) took us into a conference room, and everyone was in tears. Going through three knee surgeries and playing the game that I loved and played since I was 4 years old…it was just so was tough.”

Babb said she was playing relatively pain-free this season. The three-year team captain was batting .300 with 10 RBIs — both third-best on the team — and was tied for fourth on the squad with two home runs.

Those were career numbers for Babb, who had torn an ACL the summer after her senior year of high school and had to have two follow-up surgeries on the knee.

“She’s really battled her entire career to try to get back to what she would view as 100 percent,” Hall said. “For as healthy as she was, she worked her butt off to get in as good of shape as she was. I couldn’t have asked for anything more out of her. She worked really hard at her swing, and I really think a lot of it was getting back strength in her legs. I think she finally gained trust in it and was the Elyse Babb that we recruited.”

The Bulldogs were enjoying their first winning season since Babb had been there. They were 15-8 this year after going 16-32 last season.

“It was just so much fun,” Babb said. “It was a very, very good season until it ended. It was just a bummer for all my teammates because last year wasn’t great. Winning and having fun, we just had such a good team culture. That really hurt, knowing that the season ended and I can’t play with any of those girls again.”

The news of the shutdown effectively ended Babb’s softball career. Although she has a year of eligibility remaining, she is graduating this month and getting married in September, so she is looking for a teaching job.

“My body aged very quickly in college,” Babb said. “I didn’t realize the physical toll the surgeries would have on me as a catcher. I have a fifth year, but I kind of decided I needed to start life. It’s always been the plan just to graduate in four years. I love my teammates, but with getting married and needing to have a full-time job and have an adult life, I knew I needed to move on.”

Babb had been student-teaching in a 12th-grade economics class at Pike High School from January to mid-March. She was just about to start student teaching in an eighth-grade U.S. history/social studies class at Brownsburg when schools went to e-learning.

That also threw Babb a curveball.

“I’m helping my cooperating mentor as much as I can,” Babb said. “Since school was canceled, I’ve not been able to meet my class. It’s been a very unorthodox way to teach, but I know everyone is going through the same thing.”

Babb is graduating with a degrees in middle/secondary education and in history/political science. She plans to marry former Columbus North soccer player Sam Snider in September.

“My goal is to teach social studies at a middle school or high school, hopefully in Columbus,” Babb said. “I’d like to teach and coach softball.”

Hall knows it will be difficult to replace Babb’s production both on an off the field.

“I couldn’t have asked for a better representative of Butler softball as a person and as a teammate,” Hall said. “Elyse Babb was just that quiet captain that was there for everybody. She’s a great kid. We’re going to miss her.”