Standout athlete and strikeout artist extraordinaire Emma Olejniczak signed a National Letter of Intent to take her softball talents to the University of Northern Iowa Thursday at a ceremony in the Brady Library at Perry High School, admitting during the event that “the fit felt perfect.”
“I was told while I was looking at where to go that when the right fit came along I would know it,” the Jayette senior hurler said. “With UNI I just really liked the coaches and the school and knew, that, OK, this was where I wanted to be.”
In a prepared statement she read before putting her signature on paper, the pitching ace thanked numerous people, including parents Jason and Tiffany, for all they had done in preparing her for the moment. She thanked her father for all the coaching instruction he had given her and for all the hours he spent working on her pitching and her mother for “driving me over 5,000 miles” to a variety of club softball games, tournaments and events.
Olejniczak thanked her brother, Kaleb, and sister, Lydia, as well, along with a wide network of family members, friends and classmates for their support. She noted her current Jayette teammates and coaches and singled out her coaches in the other sports she also plays for pushing her to succeed while former Jayette coach and pitching standout Missy Michel was thanked for her guidance and long hours of work in “helping me be the pitcher I am, helping me to reach every milestone along the way.”
Fellow Perry senior Brooke Huntington received special praise.
“She has been my best friend forever,” Olejniczak said of her long-time catcher. “I can’t thank her enough for always being willing to take the extra time to catch me, for all the times she cancelled her own plans to work with me. She never gets mad when I throw one low off her legs, never throws it real hard back to me, never complains about anything. It has meant everything in the world to me.”
UNI won 38 games last year and was 16-10 in Missouri Valley Conference play. Head coach Ryan Jacobs — who is 267-209 in eight years in Cedar Falls — will receive the talents of the hurler who finished second each of the last two years in Class 4A in total strikeouts with 315.
Olejniczak helped lead Perry (25-14) to sixth place at the state tournament last season, and set tourney records for strikeouts in a seven-inning game 4A game (16) while tying the mark of total strikeouts in a single tournament (32) in 4A.
Returning to Fort Dodge, and winning at least 30 games along the way, were just two of the goals Olejniczak said she had for the 2017 season.
She will enter her final season for head coach Tina Kenney with 878 career strikeouts in 797 career innings pitched. She is 65-58 in the ring with an ERA she has nearly halved each season since starting 28 games as an eighth grader. In 2016 she yielded just 1.46 earned runs per game, allowed opposing batters to hit just .158 and had a better than 4-to-1 strikeout to walk ratio.
Olejniczak said while she was excited to be a Panther, having now made her college choice official would help her focus on one final summer wearing Jayette blue.
“I think we are going to have a great summer and I can’t wait for it to get here,” she smiled. “I really believe that this is going to be a special season.”
