Lopes' 4 main arms complement each other to put ERA at 1.79
By: Paul Coro
The Grand Canyon pitching rotation that is posting college softball's lowest ERA this season includes hurlers from three Oklahoma towns with less than 10,000 people combined and a third-year Lope who was raised in the Phoenix area but first played on a sub-.500 team elsewhere.
GCU enters this week's WAC Tournament in Riverside, California, with the nation's second-best record (43-6) in large part due to its pitchers' 1.79 ERA, the lowest by a WAC team in 13 years.
Four pitchers accounting for more than 300 innings complement each other like unique colors that also match. The Lopes paint the corners with senior Meghan Golden and junior Taryn Batterton forming their one-two knockout punch and junior Maggie Place and freshman Oakley Vickers blending the pitching picture with depth.
They throw with chips on their pitching shoulders, with the trio of upperclassmen coming from Northern Colorado (Golden), McLellan Community College in Texas (Batterton) and Division II Oklahoma Baptist (Place).
"Because we were overlooked, we come here and have something to prove every time we pitch," said Golden, the WAC Pitcher of the Year from Peoria, Arizona. "It's nice that Coach (Shanon) Hays didn't look past us because now we're doing good things and playing with a chip on our shoulder."
Hays calls the pitching staff "the heartbeat of our team," one that he thought might be rebuilding and instead is on the nation's longest active winning streak (20 games) entering its 1 p.m. Thursday opener at the WAC Tournament.
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    Meghan Golden and
     Taryn Batterton
GCU keeps opponents off-balance with four styles of pitchers who provide in-game options to Hays and first-year pitching coach Kat Frakes. An offense that hits .350, ninth best nationally, can provide the scoring to win regularly, but GCU pitchers often do not need much run support to dominate with 14 shutouts and a better ERA than the nation's 308 other teams.
"Usually, the low ERA teams are teams like Tennessee that have the high-velocity pitchers and tons of strikeouts," Hays said. "Our defense has really helped our ERA. We pitch to a lot of contact and get a lot of ground balls, and Meg gets a lot of pop-ups."
Each pitcher has proven essential in accumulating a staff WHIP of 1.09:
Golden has the nation's third-best ERA (0.97) to be the only player with at least 13 wins and no losses this season. Working a curve to both sides of the plate with a riseball, Golden's 54 career wins rank 18th among active players in the nation. "She has very wicked movement that sometimes will even throw off our coaching staff, like, 'Was that a rise?,' " Frakes said. "I'll be like, 'No, that was a curveball. She just spun it."
Batterton has the nation's second-best winning percentage (17-1, .944) for pitchers with at least 18 decisions. Golden is the only WAC pitcher with a better ERA than Batterton (1.70), whose change-up draws soft contact to lead a repertoire with curves, drops and occasional rises. "What I love about Taryn is her ability to throw strikes," Frakes said. "She is just dominant in her ability to throw strikes, but also be able to change speeds."
      Maggie Place
Place is 9-3 with a 2.33 ERA after the only hit she allowed in her last five-inning outing came on her first pitch. The Washington, Oklahoma, native is crafty with off-speed location and goes to either side of the plate by mixing three speeds well with a drop, screwball or curveball and the off-speed. "You can not take certain pitches from her because she's going to get you when she gets into the count," Frakes said. "Maggie is a unique pitcher because she doesn't use velo as much, but uses her spin."
Vickers, the lone left-hander with a southpaw pitching coach, has been the in-season sensation, throwing most of her innings since April 11 with a 0.71 ERA in that three-week span. The freshman from Tuttle, Oklahoma, clicked when she complemented her curveball with a change-up. "She's curveball in every quadrant," Frakes said. "She's future Meg with a lot of her spin. She has really gathered herself to be able to get in on righties. She's so tough on lefties because she can throw in and cut them with a hard curve away."
Golden, Batterton and hard-throwing senior leader Emily Darwin were 2023 teammates when GCUÂ upset then-No. 2 UCLA in the NCAA Los Angeles Regional. Golden started, and Darwin earned the win, but Batterton only threw 11 innings that season. The 6-foot-3 Latta, Oklahoma, native spent last season in Waco, Texas, helping McClellan be the national junior college runner-up.
"I didn't know what to expect coming back in," said Batterton, who built her confidence in fall play. "I exceeded expectations for myself this year, and I just want to keep building on that. Kat has built so much confidence in me that my stuff is good and that if I have a good day, I can beat any team and any batter."
Batterton's increased impact showed up in the season's third game, when she became the ninth pitcher in GCU history to throw a no-hitter. She wound up tossing a team-high 107 innings, lightening Golden's load to 87 regular-season innings.
"At the beginning of the season, I was like, 'Wow, we're doing so good,' " said Frakes, who previously was Nicholls State's pitching coach in 2023 and 2024. "It was something special to see, but being able to sustain that through the season and have the No. 1 ERA is just mind-boggling.
"Being with this staff brings me more joy than what I've ever felt in softball."
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        Oakley Vickers
Other than Golden's veteran leadership, each transition has been stellar.
Batterton has a lower ERA than she did last season against junior colleges. Place adapted from Division II to Division I competition, and Vickers went from the Oklahoma prepsters to D-I hitters. A strong defense with a .970 fielding percentage also has been essential for the staff's varying, soft-contact style.
Before Hays arrived at GCU, the Lopes ranked 217th nationally in ERA in 2021. In his first three NCAA Tournament-qualifying seasons, the Lopes posted ERAs of less than 3.00 and ranked in the top 40 in 2023 and 2024.
That has enabled a string of programs firsts, from making GCU's first NCAA regional in 2022, to getting its first regional win in 2023 to reaching the Lopes' first regional final in 2024.
"It's been really cool to watch this grow each year," Golden said. "My first year, everybody looked at us like we weren't anything. It's been really cool to turn heads.
"I want to win the WAC one more time and keep making a name for ourselves. I want to win a regional, but we have to win the WAC first."
