Hanah Bowen makes postseason softball look effortless.
Arizona’s senior ace was back to her old tricks again last weekend, pitching back-to-back complete games as the Arizona Wildcats won their NCAA Regional in Columbia, Missouri.
Bowen struck out 14 combined batters and walked only three. And when runners were in scoring position, Bowen reached down deep to get out of it. She induced 27 groundouts or flyouts.
What most watching didn’t know is exactly how deep Bowen is digging on each pitch.
See, Bowen is pitching with a hip injury. It was something that appeared during the season. She shut it down and rested for a number of days after pitching the first game of an April 23 doubleheader at Utah. Bowen’s still not 100%.
“I think it got to the point where I threw a pitch over and over again and it just didn’t feel right,” Bowen said. “We definitely took some time a little bit and rest and I feel a tad bit better but I’m still pushing through. … No matter what, the body at this time of the season is crashing down, may not feel good. But the mind, I feel, just takes over and you have to have that great mindset.”
Arizona (36-20) is betting on a strong mindset from Bowen as it takes on Mississippi State (37-25) in the Super Regionals starting Friday at 9 a.m.
Bowen hasn’t let her hip injury or the other struggles get her down. It’s not in her nature. “I don’t believe in excuses,” she said.
“Because it always brings you down and keeps you complacent,” Bowen added. “I think life is going to throw you challenges — especially now. I don’t know why it’s happening now. But it is what it is, and I’ve just got to keep moving forward.”
Moving forward right now means bringing out the performances that only rarely appeared during the regular season, when Bowen went 10-10 with a 4.10 ERA. The numbers weren’t what Bowen was expecting after going with 10-4 with a 2.06 ERA lat season. She was at her best in the postseason, going 4-1 as the Wildcats advanced to the Women’s College World Series.
Bowen said she feels “a different level, a different gear” this time of year.
“It’s weird how it happens, but I do feel it,” she said. “I just think at this moment, this is the ending, so I might as well I have to give it my all, especially for this team.”
Arizona starting pitcher Hanah Bowen celebrates striking out the last Oregon batter of the night during Arizona’s April 14 win over Oregon at Hillenbrand Stadium. Bowen has pitched the last month with a hip injury.
Prior to the start of NCAAs, Bowen rehabbed using the underwater treadmill in McKale Center. Over the last week in Columbia and now in Starkville, Mississippi, she has been doing exercises in the Wildcats’ hotel pools.
Trainers and coaches are also monitoring Bowen’s soreness very closely. Pitching coach Taryne Mowatt-McKinney’s first task on Saturday morning was to check on Bowen’s hip.
“It wasn’t feeling great, but it wasn’t feeling bad,” Mowatt-McKinney said. “As she did her warmup and her activation work, she started warming up, and to me she simplified things in her warmups to where there wasn’t a lot of extra movement stuff with her body. Her warmup Saturday was her best warmup of the season. And I thought she looked really good Friday. Her ball was moving really well, and I was thinking she’s going to have a great game today. And she did. … (She) knew the mentality was going to be there, but physically, sometimes your body just doesn’t do what you want it to. But Saturday, whatever she was doing was working.”
What exactly was working for Bowen on Saturday?
“Her velocity is really good right now. But mostly her spins have been tighter,” Mowatt-McKinney said. “And a lot of that comes from just her snap and her fingers in and I think trusting the movement of your pitches because your pitch is going to move different from week to week depending on how you feel. …
“It takes a lot of trust in your movement, and I think that’s what she’s doing right now. She’s trusting her movement and she does have a little bit of velocity back right now.”
If anyone understands what Bowen is going through, it’s Mowat-McKinney. In her senior season in 2007, Mowatt-McKinney — then Taryne Mowatt — pitched a record 60 innings over eight Women’s College World Series games, leading the Wildcats to a national title. She threw all 1,037 pitches with cut fingers that required constant maintenance.
“I would cut my fingers open, they would hurt, I would tape it. It would heal. I’d take the tape off. I’d re open the cuts on my fingers to the point that I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to have this all season long. It’s not something that’s going to go away until the season is over,’” she said. “Instead of trying to figure out how to fix it in order to be successful, (I thought), ‘How do I be successful with it?’ And I think that’s kind of something that ‘Bo’ has learned with her hip is. ‘How do I be successful with this? Because it’s not going to go away in the next two three weeks.’”
Mowatt-McKinney said Bowen has the same “want to win” that she had 15 years ago.
“I see a lot of myself in ‘Bo,’ just size-wise with her not being the biggest pitcher — the type of pitcher that that I was and the type of pitcher that she is and just the way that she carries herself,” Mowatt-McKinney said. “Her presence is big, but her she’s not very vocal. She’s just a head-down, go-about-your-business type of person. And I think with her being a fifth-year senior and having that postseason experience and the rest of our staff being so young and inexperienced … that was how it was my junior and senior years. (It’s) just having that similarity of, ‘OK, this is your time to shine and give it everything that you have.’”
The Wildcats must win two games against MSU this weekend to move on to their third World Series in the last four years. They need Bowen, and she knows it. Yet she doesn’t let the pressure get to her.
“I try not to think of the result,” Bowen said. “I think I just tell myself pitch by pitch, like, one pitch at a time, and breathe because that just keeps me in the present. … It’s definitely the mindset, it definitely made me stronger. I had the mindset it is what it is because it takes the pressure off myself. It just puts me in a zone to do what I know how to do.”
Bowen has learned how to be efficient to pitch through the pain and be able to multiple days in a row, not just a few innings here and there. This mindset is what separates Bowen from others.
“She’s really been exceptional in turning it on and having the mentality of working through the ups and downs,” Mowatt-McKinney said. “She knows that she has this stuff at this point. It’s a mentality of, ‘Let’s get to the games. I’m going to give everything I have. I’m going to be efficient in what I have to give that way.’ …
“She’s accepted that her hip is going to hurt. We’re monitoring that and we’re making sure that it’s not something that’s going to be a lifelong injury, obviously. But it’s something that for the next couple of weeks, it’s going to be a nagging pain in her hip. It’s that mentality where, ‘OK, it’s going to be here. I know what it feels like. I know when it feels really, really bad to where we need to raise a red flag, and I need to take a step back, but how do I still be great with what I have?’ And I think she’s gotten to that point where she knows her limits, and she knows what she needs to do with the pain being there.”
