Kodiak Creative

West Coast Trip Marks Start of 2025 Softball Season

Titans to play six games in three days

3/7/2025 10:00:00 AM

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. - The Illinois Wesleyan University softball team travels to Southern California to lift the lid off the 2025 season Saturday-Monday, March 8-10. The Titans will play six games in three days beginning with a doubleheader at Claremont-Mudd Scripps Saturday, March 8, at 12 p.m. PT. Illinois Wesleyan will play two against Chapman University Sunday, March 9, beginning at 12 p.m. PT before a split doubleheader against Case Western Reserve and Bethel University Monday, March 10.

Illinois Wesleyan returns several key pieces from last season's squad that posted a 31-12 record and swept the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin regular season and tournament championships. In all, IWU returns six of its seven All-CCIW awardees from 2024 and has bolstered its roster with nine freshmen.

In the circle, the Titans welcome back CCIW Pitcher of the Year Gianna Certa (Third Lake, Ill.-Grayslake North). Now a junior, Certa headlines a staff that includes junior Caroline Gatchell (Grayslake, Ill.-Carmel Catholic) and sophomore Mallory Holland (Shelbyville, Ill.-Shelbyville) alongside three freshmen. Certa, an all-region selection a year ago, posted a 19-3 record in the circle with a 1.22 earned run average and eight shutouts. She struckout a team-high 113 over a team-leading 149 innings of work. Gatchell picked up eight wins over 18 appearances and fanned 51, while Holland notched two wins and a save in her rookie season.

The Green and White's 2025 roster includes five of its top offensive producers from a season ago, including First Team All-CCIW selections senior Jen Kuhn (Normal, Ill.-University High) and junior Casey Wissmiller (Bloomington, Ill.-Olympia). The duo turned in breakthrough years while holding down the left side of the infield. Kuhn and Wissmiller combined for nearly 100 RBIs in 2024. IWU's starting shortstop, Kuhn hit a career-best .434 last season with 63 hits and 47 RBIs. Wissmiller led the Green and White with 48 RBIs and ranked third with 60 hits.

Senior Ava Khoury (Columbia, Ill.-Columbia), junior Anna Beckman (Bourbonnais, Ill.-Bishop McNamara), and sophomore Hailey Milgazo (Poway, Calif.-Poway) also return. Khoury hit .323 with 22 RBIs as IWU's everyday first baseman, a spot she has held since stepping on campus four years ago. Returning from injury that sidelined her as a freshman, Beckman burst onto the scene with a .397 batting average while patrolling centerfield. She finished with a team-high four triples, while cranking out 48 hits and going a perfect 16-for-16 in stolen bases. Milgazo topped the team with .460 batting average and used her speed at the top of the lineup to swipe 19 bases. She led the team with 64 hits and ranked third with 39 runs scored.

Khoury and Wissmiller, who became the first Titans in program history to win Rawlings Gold Gloves last spring, led an Illinois Wesleyan defense that finished fifth nationally with a .977 fielding percentage.

IWU holds a 2-1 record against its Cali competition, never having faced Case Western Reserve and Bethel. The Titans are 1-0 against Chapman, with the win coming via a 3-0 shutout March 2, 2024. The series with CMS sits level, 1-1. The Athenas won the initial meeting, 2-1, in Orlando back in 2011, while IWU blanked Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, 3-0, at the NFCA Leadoff Classic in 2022.

Links on how to follow IWU's six-game California trip can be found on the softball schedule page of iwusports.com.

Print Friendly Version