When she was just 8 years old, Madison Knight told her father that she wanted to be a better pitcher than him.
Jason Knight, who pitched in college at the Division II level for Clarion University in Pennsylvania, was amused by his daughter’s ambition.
“He thought it was cute, thinking it was never going to happen,” Madison Knight recalled recently.
A little more than a decade and hundreds of strikeouts later, Knight is on the verge of making her not-so-humble wish come true.
Knight was recently named the Gatorade Maryland Softball Player of the Year for a second consecutive season after leading Patterson Mill High School in Bel Air to back-to-back appearances in the MPSSAA Class 1A championship game, including a state championship win in 2021.
Knight was virtually unhittable, amassing more than 500 strikeouts during her high school career despite not having a sophomore season due to the pandemic and sharing time with teammates in the circle as a freshman and a junior.
After starting all 22 games for Patterson Mill as a senior this spring, Knight rang up nearly 300 strikeouts (296) in 133 innings pitched. She allowed just 52 hits and her ERA was a minuscule 0.32. She also hit .554 with 11 homers.
“Madison’s dominance on the mound can be directly credited to her hard work and determination,” Kevin Medicus, the coach of Harford County rival Fallston High School said in a press release announcing the Gatorade Player of the Year award for Madison.
“Her outstanding command, velocity and sequence of pitches was just enough to keep [batters] off balance.”
In college, Knight will pitch at the Division I level for Syracuse University in upstate New York, where she will look to take on some of the best hitters in the country with her devastating curveball and her beloved changeup.
“I think it’s more fun to throw the changeup and see how people react,” she said. “I love see people’s reactions [to the pitches].”
She also loves to compete, a trait that runs feverishly throughout the Knight household, usually as good-natured fun. Even going up the stairs presents a chance for Madison and her younger sister, Mackenzie, to race and claim some sort of bragging rights over the other.
Madison wasn’t sure who was more competitive. She said Mackenzie usually started the gamesmanship, but Madison, once hooked in, felt compelled to finish it.
It’s reached a point where Madison, the dominant pitcher, is scared to face Mackenzie, a very talented freshman hitter for Patterson Mill this past season, even in the backyard, because someone would be forced to live with the result of the encounter.
“She doesn’t want to face the fact that if she doesn’t get a hit off of me, I’ll never let her live that down,” Madison said. “And I don’t know if I will be able to face the fact that if she gets a hit off of me, she’ll always be able to say, ‘I got a hit off of you.'”
The Knight sisters were teammates for the first time at Patterson Mill this spring.
“She is the complete opposite of me [as a player],” Madison said of Mackenzie. “I am a pitcher and power hitter and she is an outfielder and [slap] hitter.”
After the Huskies suffered their only loss of the season to Allegany in the 1A championship game, Madison embraced Mackenzie.
“When we lost [3-2], I wasn’t upset about the loss,” Madison said. “You win some, and you lose some. I told everybody that. I did not cry until I hugged my sister. That’s what hit me the hardest. That was literally my breaking point. It was the final time we’d get to play together.”
Their competitive rivalry will endure, however, even if they are separated by hundreds of miles.
At Syracuse, Madison is also looking forward to moving past her father in the hierarchy of family pitchers.
“It’s starting to set in [for Jason],” Madison said. “One of his two kids is going to college in a month and a half and going to pitch.”
“He hasn’t taken it in fully yet,” she added. “But, once I leave, it will hit him pretty hard.”
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Madison Knight