Devyn Netz excited to bring renewed strength back into Arizona softball lineup

Everything Devyn Netz has done over the last year was to get to this moment.

It wasn’t easy for this 5-9 triple-threat player, who dominates in the circle and at the plate and plays a little first base in between, to not be on the field with her teammates — especially her classmates who graduated after leading the Wildcats to the Super Regionals last season.

She was sidelined with a back injury that flared up again after having a similar injury in high school. Netz joked that “obviously, when you get older, injuries (are) prolonged a little bit.”

As the season is upon us — the Wildcats host the Candrea Classic this weekend, kicking off with a doubleheader Thursday against Michigan State at 5 p.m. — she is itching to get at it.

“The only thing that kept me motivated from my true senior year for my injury, was that one day I am going to put that uniform on again,” Netz said.

“That was the one thing that just kept me motivated week by week. Over the summer I had some doubts because I had a few flare ups here and there. But I kept truly believing that I was going to be OK. When I put the uniform on this fall, I took a photo and sent it to both my physical therapists I worked with last year. I was like ‘We did it.’ And I was like, ‘It’s not an official thing because it’s just the fall games.’ But to me it meant the world because so little of an injury was so big in my life that it did take a bit of a mental toll. But the mountains that I had to climb to get over that and the fact that I was able to conquer that felt so good in that moment.”

That fortitude has made Netz ready to take on anything that comes her way this season in all aspects of the game.

It’s important to remember where Netz was before the injury.

In her sophomore year, she went on an incredible run in the postseason, along with Hanah Bowen, carrying the Wildcats to the Women’s College World Series in Oklahoma City. During that stretch, she won two games and had an ERA of 1.22. Netz and Bowen combined to strike out 33 batters and give up 10 runs in 55 innings of postseason work.

In her junior year, Netz earned second-team All-Pac 12 and NFCA All-West region honors. She was also Pac-12 Player of the Week in February 2023 for her performances in both the circle and at-bat (four home runs and 10 RBIs over the five-game set; struck out nine, allowed five earned runs in 16 2/3 innings).

Netz was the ace, pitching 171 innings that season, with 14 complete games. As the workhorse, her ERA was 3.88, with 135 strikeouts and a 16-16 record. With her bat, she hit .303 with 13 homers, 40 RBIs, a slugging percentage of nearly .600 and an OPS of .959.

She is picking up where she left off, making D1 Softball’s preseason Top 100 list this year at No. 69.

Sense of urgency

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While she was out, Netz gained a new perspective of the game. For Netz, one of the biggest things she learned was to be a better leader by not just being a voice, but also by listening and being there for her teammates.

In addition, she has a new-found appreciation for her coaches, especially in how they strategized last season to find ways to win without a fully-loaded arsenal of arms for the circle. Besides Netz, two other pitchers were out for the season in Ryan Maddox and Sydney Somerndike. Brooke Mannon also missed some games with a nagging arm injury.

Arizona coach Caitlin Lowe sees the urgency Netz has for the game.

“Every single time she’s on the mound in an inner squad, it looks like the most important game of the entire season, and that just emanates to the rest of our team,” Lowe said. “That’s been exciting. Same thing when she picks up a bat, honestly, to see that spread to the rest of the team.

“I told Ryan Maddox, anytime you redshirt and you get to take a step back, you really get kind of a coach’s perspective of the game and how you want to step right back into it. It’s just a new perspective that you’ve never been able to have, because since you were probably 6 years old, you’ve never missed anything, and you’ve been the one on the field. I think (Netz) got a look at how she wants to be now, reentering this season, and I’m excited for this version of Devyn.”

It’s all in the mechanics

As she spent time as a student of the team, she was simultaneously rehabbing. Netz took a few steps forward, then a few steps back, as is typical of physical therapy. She said it was Lowe and especially UA coach Christian Conrad, who helped her through this time. It took an incredible amount of discipline to keep pushing through. It was the accountability and the positive reinforcement that all of this would help Netz, that helped keep her on track.

Conrad has so much belief in Netz that he came right out and said, “I think she should be an All-American this year; that’s what we are working for. I give her the expectation because I know she can do it, without a doubt.”

During her physical therapy, she worked on strengthening her core, her lower back and her hamstrings.

To determine what the cause of the injury was, one of her physical therapists, Nick Conte of Conte Performance in Scottsdale, had Netz film herself hitting and pitching. After they broke down the film, it was determined that it was in her pitching mechanics and with a few subtle tweaks, she was on her way.

“Every single time I would go into extension, it would put stress on that, so I had to fine tune my mechanics when it came to pitching,” Netz said. “I thought hitting was the issue because I thought it was rotational. We worked on sports specific therapy, which was like rotational movements. Basically, having my hips move with my upper body so I could protect my back. We found that it was in my pitching wind up that when I came through and I planted, that I had to bring my whole body through and not leave behind my hips and everything.”

What’s gone into this new version is extra time spent with Conrad. His pitching philosophy takes a deep dive into the analytics. She learned about how to pitch to beat certain players and said it “opened up a whole new world for me.”

“He’s just elevated my game, and he’s made me think about so much more and what I’m capable of,” Netz said of Conrad. “He’s actually just expanded my pitches, and he’s allowed me to almost trust in my pitches and my spin and my movement so much more than I thought I ever could.”