High school softball: Catcher Madi Lichty always in the thick of it for Buckeye

Madi Lichty became a catcher around the age of 10 for a very simple reason. "Nobody else wanted to do it, so I thought I'd be the cool one with the mask on," the 18-year-old Buckeye senior said Thursday. "I wanted to be a pitcher originally, but I was terrible at it, so I figured catcher would be the next-best thing. "Being involved in every play is what made me stick with it. Being in charge and being a leader, it gave me a sense of purpose and I loved it." A 5-foot-3 bundle of energy, definite Type A personality and extremely outgoing — "I used to be pretty quiet," she insisted — Lichty and her Buckeye teammates will put their 22-6 record on the line at 1 p.m. today when they take on 2023 state runner-up Canfield (24-3) in the Nordonia Division II Regional final. Making the first regional appearance in program history, the Bucks will attempt to become the first Medina County softball team to reach the state tournament since Medina in 2012. "It's been a wild ride, but all of my teammates worked so hard to get here," Lichty said. "It's a moment where you sit back and watch all the hard work you put in play out. "The challenge is going to be pretty big, but I have some scouts on Aurora (a 12-2 loser to the Cardinals in the regional semifinals) and they have told me Canfield is beatable. Our defense just has to be on its 'A' game." One of just three seniors on Buckeye's roster — she grew up playing softball with classmates Olivia Matras and Alexa Rundle — Lichty will once again be behind the dish and batting third this afternoon. Among regular players in the lineup, Lichty leads the Bucks in OPS (1.129), slugging percentage (.614), walks (15) and doubles (10) and is tied for first in RBIs (26, Kwynn Czerwony), hits (34, Czerwony), plate appearances (102, Cassy Minarchick) and triples (2, Faith Shaw). She is second on the team with a .410 batting average (Kelsey Metter, .416) and .515 on-base percentage (Metter, .516). As valuable as she is offensively, the future marine biology major and owner of a 4.5 grade-point average is even more important behind the plate, where she calls all the pitches for standout freshman Lilly Young (12-3), who has 34 strikeouts and no walks over 19 innings in her last three postseason games. "She has a lot of knowledge," Young said. "She really pays attention to batters and what they hit. The first time we go through the lineup, we really work pitches. The next time they come up, we know what to throw. "Sometimes she calls a pitch I really don't want to throw, but I throw it because she knows what she's doing." Young, who has a 1.64 ERA, 174 strikeouts and just 13 walks over 98 1/3 innings, has not shaken off a single sign from Lichty this season. The one time pitcher and catcher wish she had came in a 7-2 victory over Northwest in the district finals, when Caroline Metzger belted a rarely used changeup well over the left-field fence. "I had a feeling that girl was going to hit a bomb," Young said. "I just went with it, but as soon as she hit it I was like, 'Yep, there it is.' It was OK, though. It didn't rattle us." Though that pitch call didn't work, there was a reason Lichty asked Young to throw it with the Bucks up 7-1 and the Indians batting in the top of the seventh. "Lilly hates throwing changeups, but I wanted to see what it would do," she said. "As soon as that ball left the bat I'm like, 'Why did I call that?'" Buckeye's starting catcher the last two seasons and a four-year varsity player, Lichty has put a lot of work into learning how to call games. It started as a freshman when she made a rare start behind the plate and a Keystone player hit a home run. "I love calling pitches, but I was not the best at it as a freshman," she said. "I knew I had to look into it and get better at it, so me and my dad (Mark) would watch the Women's College World Series on TV. Before every pitch, I would look at the batter's feet and guess what pitch was going to be called." These days Lichty not only notes where a batter stands in the box but watches how each hitter moves her hands while taking practice swings. "I stare them down," she said. "They probably think I'm psycho." When she took up the position eight years ago, it wasn't nearly that scientific. Lichty didn't want to be standing in the hot sun for two hours just waiting for a ball to be hit to her, so she decided to play a position where every ball was thrown to her — or at least where every ball was intended to be thrown to her. "I remember my legs hurting so bad," she said. "Those pitchers at that point were not like Lilly. They'd throw the ball wherever and hope for it to be a strike, so I had to move around a lot. In the grand scheme of things, that made me a better player." A take-charge person with a charismatic personality and tremendous sense of humor, Lichty is now Buckeye's unquestioned leader on the field. "She is someone who is always hyping people up," Young said. "She's always positive and she's super outgoing. If there's anything negative going on, she will knock it right off. Her taking charge, that's been super important." When her high school softball career is over, Lichty will move on to the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she will concentrate on her academics. She originally thought she would go to school somewhere in Florida — "You want to be near the water if you're going to major in marine biology," she astutely pointed out — but then one day she went into "a nutrition shake place" and the young lady behind the counter was wearing a sharp-looking Wilmington shirt. Lichty struck up a conversation that ended up lasting 30 minutes, eventually toured the university and immediately decided it was the place for her. "It felt like the right place," she said. "It just clicked." Lichty became interested in marine biology in a similarly unique manner. In fifth grade, she was riding her boogie board in Holden Beach, N.C., lost her balance and, as she was falling into the ocean, her hand landed on a small shark. Just like that a college major was discovered, but that story has nothing on the "stuffed horse head on a stick" that came to be named Hay Bale. Lichty was sound asleep as the Bucks were making their spring break trip to the Ripken Experience in Myrtle Beach, S.C., when the team made a restroom stop "somewhere in West Virginia." "It was right there," she said of the horse on a stick that came to be named in honor of sophomore Haiden Morrison, who was unable to make the trip. "Everyone was like, 'You're not going to buy that; you're not going to buy that.' I hate when people do that, so I bought it." Hay Bale cost "18 dollars and change" but was worth every penny. "I was in low-cash mode after that, but she's our good luck charm," Lichty said. "She's at every game. I see it as riding our horse off to victory." Contact Rick Noland at (330) 721-4046 or rnoland@medina-gazette.com. Follow him @RickNoland on X.