Farrell finds her groove

A pick-up player at the ripe age of 9 years old, Ella Farrell remembers being asked to play outfield for a cousin’s softball team in Helena. 

Which was fine, right up until she saw that player in the pitcher’s circle.

“The next day I was like, ‘Mom, I want to pitch,’ “ Farrell said Wednesday, on the eve of Glacier’s Crosstown softball game against visiting Flathead. “I want to pitch. I want to pitch.”

Now a senior, the 5-foot-10 Farrell has cut a pretty wide swath through Montana’s fastpitch ranks. Coming off a season in which she helped the Glacier Wolfpack win the 2023 State AA championship and was named the Gatorade Player of Year, she shows no signs of slowing down.

Which would be silly: She has 468 high school strikeouts in 332 innings, with 69 in 44 innings this year. She throws fast, and she almost always has. 

“I was not good at the beginning,” she noted. “I could not pitch a strike to save my life.”

She turned a corner, she said, when her dad Brian cleared a lane in their garage. “We worked out almost every day that winter,” she said.

The rest is pretty well documented. As a freshman she went 12-2 and struck out 151 hitters while the Wolfpack surged to a 23-5 record and a fourth-place showing at the State AA tournament.

Farrell and Glacier fell back to the pack the next season: She went 8-6, her earned-run average rose by a point and the Wolfpack were 12-11.

“I think I had such a great freshman year, I was like, ‘I want to top it,’ “ Farrell said. “I put so much pressure on myself and didn’t really rely on my skills and all the work I’d put in.”

“I think that’s true,” Glacier coach Abby Snipes said. “I think she always put a lot of pressure on herself. Ultimately it’s her heart, being the competitor she is.”

Farrell credits her parents, Snipes and volunteer pitching coach Gary Evans with helping her find the groove again. 

“He is the greatest pitching coach I’ve ever had, though my dad is pretty great too,” Farrell said of Evans. “I don’t think I’d be the athlete I am without him. He helps so much with my mentality.

“The game is fun, it’s supposed to be fun,” she added. “You can’t control everything — you have to find the beauty in mistakes and grow from it.”

That season only set the stage for a banner 2023 which brought a couple mid-April mettle-testers: A 15-14 win over powerful Missoula Sentinel, then two days later a sweep of the Helena schools that included a 5-4, 12-inning victory over Capital.

“We just didn’t give up,” Farrell said of the latter. “I think that’s when I knew we had something special.”

Farrell was a big part of that, going 12-2 again white the team went 20-3. She was in the circle when Glacier earned its title-clinching, 18-7 win over Helena High last May. It was Glacier’s second state championship and first since 2015.

“She gained a lot of confidence as a person and a player and I think she just kind of learned to trust her teammates,” Snipes said. “Not that she didn’t trust them before, but that she could trust that no matter what her performance is, they have her back. 

“It’s such a great life lesson that I hope she keeps that confidence forever, with whatever life brings her.”

By this point next year Farrell plans to be in the circle for College of Southern Idaho. The junior college Golden Eagles out of Twin Falls were 45-18 a year ago and are 31-11 this season.

Glacier, meanwhile, is 6-2 with as many league losses (two) as it had all last season. There is no panic; it’s a veteran team.“We don’t have to be perfect,” Snipes said. “Even last year, which ended in the best way, we didn’t have a perfect season. We had moments where we had to figure some things out.”

 There is an expectation that teams will bring their A game. That includes Flathead, which just split four games with the Helena and Great Falls schools while the Pack went 3-1 in that span.

“We know they’re good,” Farrell said of the Bravettes. “They have it all. Pitching, hitting and defense.”

So does Glacier; seven players have home runs, including Farrell, who by the way owns a .404 career batting average. The Pack also have their ace.

“Our goal is to get better every game,” Farrell said. “I think we’re definitely doing that.”

    Glacier's Ella Farrell (12) drives in a run in the second inning against Missoula Hellgate at Glacier High School on Thursday, April 6. (Casey Kreider/Daily Inter Lake)