Taylor McQuillin, born with a condition that left her blind in one eye, said her parents were hesitant when she asked about playing competitive sports, especially a sport in which batted balls come back at the person who threw them at speeds that would be illegal on the highway.
Was she sure?
"I'm just as normal as everyone else. I want to do this," McQuillin recalled saying.
Well, yes and no.
What others called a disability, she called normal. She learned to pitch while looking at the world as she saw it, the only way she had ever seen it. So, yes, she was right about being capable of doing what others did on the softball field.
But doing it just like everyone else? That hasn't been true for a long time. It certainly wasn't true when Arizona's junior ace mowed through the Mary Nutter Classic this past week with an old-school workload.
McQuillin is espnW's player of the week after going 4-0 with one save in Arizona's five games in the marquee tournament, capped by a shutout against two-time defending champion Oklahoma and ace Paige Parker. In all, against North Carolina, Missouri, St. John's, Cal State Northridge and Oklahoma, McQuillin threw 24 innings, allowed five hits and one earned run and struck out 27 batters.
The win against Oklahoma was all the more impressive considering how much work she did before she even got to it. Sure, McQuillin tried to make her own life easier. She shut out North Carolina and Northridge in her first two starts of the week, ensuring that the run support she received shortened those games to five innings each. But the Wildcats didn't let her rest.
Against Missouri, hours after beating North Carolina, McQuillin came on in relief with Arizona down 3-0 in the second inning. She pitched the rest of the game and gave up two hits in a relief stint longer than her start earlier that day. The Wildcats rallied to win comfortably.
She then essentially warmed up for her start against Northridge the next day by entering the preceding game against St. John's in the seventh inning. Ahead 7-0 an inning earlier, Arizona watched its lead dwindle to two runs. McQuillin struck out all three batters she faced for the save.
Arizona's schedule is backloaded, the bulk of its work in Pac-12 play. But at Mary Nutter, McQuillin was the pitcher the Wildcats hoped she would be when she took over for Danielle O'Toole as ace. McQuillin is 9-1 with a 1.06 ERA this season
"She's matured, and I think talent-wise, she's always had very good talent," Arizona coach Mike Candrea said this preseason. "Everything she throws moves well."
First-year Arizona pitching coach Taryne Mowatt echoed the last part of that review. A former Wildcats pitching star, Mowatt watched from afar as her coaching career took her elsewhere, and she said McQuillin's movement and spin on the ball is only fully appreciated live.
Also best appreciated in person is the purpose with which McQullin pitches. After a freshman season that didn't live up to the expectations of most, and most importantly her own, she had to answer to her own satisfaction why she wanted to do all of this. It was about winning, yes, as it is for any person with a competitive streak. But it also is about winning for a dugout of compatriots.
So when Arizona needed her to pitch in all five games? When it needed her to throw 392 pitches in barely 48 hours, the last 137 of those pitches in a duel against Parker and the Sooners? No problem.
McQuillin only walked nine batters all weekend, but three of them came in the final two innings of the game against Oklahoma, the Sooners' great lineup not helping a weary arm. It didn't matter. The heart of the Oklahoma order barely got the ball out of the infield, and the runners wasted away on base.
"The thing about her is she knows what she wants," Mowatt said before the season. "She is very decisive on what she wants, and I think as a pitcher that's a great thing. Knowing and having confidence in what you're pitching, whether it's the right pitch in that situation or not -- hindsight is always 20/20. But she knows and is confident in what she's going to throw, no matter the result of the pitch."
Although she welcomes the notes from and interaction with kids inspired by her story and success, McQuillin would contest the idea that her sense of purpose or determination have anything to do with overcoming something. She didn't feel she overcame anything. She was just herself.
"I've never known anything different," McQuillin said. "Yeah, you can say, 'How come I'm not the one that can see out of two eyes?' But at the same time, it's a minor setback, if a setback at all. It didn't take me any longer of a period of time to learn how to play softball. I just learned how to play softball like everyone else did."
Except that not a lot of people can do what she did this past week. Not a lot of pitchers shut out Oklahoma. Fewer do it as the fifth act of a busy weekend. It was a performance that stands alone.
Previous winners: Washington's Kirstyn Thomas (Feb. 14) | Duke's Katherine Huey (Feb. 21)