Photo by Jake McNeill: Marshall pitcher Morgan Bjella throws a pitch in the second inning of a softball game against Worthington at the Marshall Softball Complex on Monday, May 5. The Tigers defeated the Trojans 4-1 behind Bjella's 17 strikeouts.

MARSHALL — The 2024 season was a special year for Marshall softball. The Tigers set a program wins record with an 18-8 final mark and reached the Section 2AAA semifinals. While the Tigers fielded a deep team with plenty of talent throughout the lineup, senior pitcher Morgan Bjella consistently had her fingerprints all over the team’s success, earning herself the title of 2024 Independent Softball Player of the Year.

Morgan first discovered her passion for softball after her older sister Aubrey began playing. Her father also played baseball at Minnesota State University. While Morgan played on the same team as Aubrey when their parents, Brian and Krista Bjella, first signed them up for softball, they took different paths within the sport. Aubrey was an outfielder but Morgan, while also a talented hitter, was drawn to pitching.

“When we were younger, they kind of just put everyone at pitcher. They just throw you out there and see who can maybe throw some strikes,” Morgan Bjella said. “I always liked it [pitching], especially as a kid, because I didn’t like just standing in the field. I thought that was really boring, so why not be in the action?”

Pitchers have a particularly strong effect on the game relative to other positions. While most players will touch a ball in play maybe once or twice an inning while on defense, the pitcher is in constant control of the pace of the game and affects every at-bat. The position by nature can often singlehandedly make the difference between a win and a loss, bringing a sort of pressure to the role that Bjella said she cherishes.

While there’s more than one way to be effective as a pitcher, Bjella has been a master of the punch-out. She first started to establish herself as a strikeout pitcher rather than a ground-ball pitcher around her freshman year, when she started feeling comfortable adding the riseball to her in-game pitch mix, along with a drop curve and changeup. 

During her time in high school, Bjella was a varsity starter on the Marshall volleyball, basketball and softball teams her senior year. While volleyball season was canceled her freshman year due to COVID-19, Bjella was a part of Class AAA state title runs in her sophomore, junior and senior seasons. The girls basketball team also qualified for the state tournament in her freshman and junior seasons, falling short in the section championship game against St. Peter her senior year.

“I’m a true believer that it [her softball success] comes from her being in multiple sports and just pitting in the time in the offseason for all sports,” Marshall softball coach Stacey Baedke said. “She did a phenomenal job of balancing her time with each one. She was a healthy person and she knew what it took to be her best on the field, off the field, on the court, no matter what it was.”

Despite being a three-sport athlete on teams that consistently made deep postseason runs, Bjella has always found time to pitch during the offseason. As a young girl, she practiced throwing to her parents in her backyard. As she got older, she’d find ways to train with her teammates in the offseason. 

Sundays were Bjella’s typical softball training day in the offseason but during the winter, with softball season looming just around the corner, she said that she would throw each morning before school with her catcher, Mackenzie Olsen.

“[Olsen] would catch for all the other pitchers, which was so helpful and so kind of her to do that for us,” Bjella said.

Heading into her final season as a Tiger, Bjella said that her focus for the season was to do what she could to contribute to winning. She was a core piece of Marshall’s 15-8 season in 2023, recording a 1.41 ERA, 0.92 WHIP and .922 OPS, but she took things up another notch in 2024.

From her first start of the season, it was clear Bjella had made a leap. She struck out 18 batters with one walk while allowing just one earned run in the Tigers’ 4-3 win over Morris Area/Chokio-Alberta in a nine-inning season opener. She rode that momentum to record a win in nine of her first 10 starts on the season.

While strikeouts were nothing new for Bjella, she found a new gear in the circle in her final prep season. She struck out 16 or more batters in consecutive games on May 2 and 6 and finished with double-digit strikeouts in each of her first 14 starts of the year, going from the season-opener into the postseason. 

Among the peak performances was a 15-strikeout outing on senior night against Windom on May 16. The performance made her the first Marshall pitcher to hit 500 career strikeouts. When she got the milestone K, play was paused to recognize the achievement. Bjella was unaware of her achievement, leaving her confused during the momentary delay between the beginning of the stoppage and her milestone over the PA system. 

“I had no idea… I was like ‘Why are they stopping the game?'” Bjella said after the game. “It’s kind of nice, especially since it was our last game here, all of us seniors… I’m just trying to do this for my team, doing the best I can so my team can do the best they can.”

Over the course of the regular season, Bjella finished with a .343/.400/.448 slash line as a hitter. Her seven doubles and 23 hits were both second only to center fielder Brielle Riess’ nine doubles and 27 hits. Her .848 OPS also ranked fourth on the team behind Riess, third baseman Halla Casavan and shortstop Jaina Dekker. 

While her batting numbers certainly contributed to the Tigers’ 14-6 regular season record, earning the team the No. 4 seed in the section tournament, her pitching numbers were otherworldly. While Marshall is the only Class AAA school in the Independent’s 12-school coverage area, she still led all area pitchers with a 0.50 ERA and 0.62 WHIP on the season. Her 16.8 strikeout-to-walk ratio was also the best among area pitchers. Those numbers only improved when it mattered most.

During the section tournament, Bjella pitched 32 1/3 innings over five starts and a one-inning save appearance. She allowed just two runs over the course of those six games, only one of which was earned. She also struck out 58 batters while walking just five, bringing her to an 11.6 strikeout-to-walk ratio that would have ranked second among area pitchers in the regular season.

The first start of the season in which Bjella struck out fewer than 10 batters was the section consolation semifinals. New Ulm had just beaten Marshall 1-0 in the section quarterfinals on a walk-off bunt, capitalizing on a Marshall fielding error on the play. The loss matched the Tigers up with the second-seeded Mankato West Scarlets, a team Marshall had never defeated. 

Still, they didn’t hang their heads. Bjella tossed five shutout innings, striking out seven batters while limiting Mankato to three hits. The performance came in spite of the fact that she was called three times for an illegal pitch, including twice in the second inning to help load the bases.

“She hadn’t been called for an illegal pitch since she was in eighth grade,” Baedke said, saying that the umpires told her that Bjella wasn’t pausing before her pitches, causing the violation. “That kind of messed with her a little bit, and they weren’t giving her the strikes that she usually gets. So she got pretty frustrated there for a little bit. I went out and talked to her and turned to the whole infield and was like, ‘We’re alright. Just throw a strike, let your defense do the work and we’ll be fine.'”

Bjella managed to get out of the jam with a strike out and went on to shut Mankato West down for the remainder of the game, something Baedke attributed to Bjella’s mental toughness.

“She thinks she’s not mentally strong when it comes to being on the mound, but I mean from what she did in her high school career, it takes somebody that is very mentally strong to be able to do what she did,” Baedke said. “She’s somebody that you can always just count on to get the job done when the job needs to be done.”

A pair of homers from Riess and Casavan gave Bjella all the run support she needed as the Tigers cruised to a 12-0 win, bringing them one game away from their first section championship appearance. It also gave them the program record for wins.

“It was just a good way to end it. I think that what we did as a group will hopefully keep moving the program forward,” Bjella said of the team breaking the wins record.

Yet, the Tigers weren’t quite able to get there. The Tigers rematched New Ulm in the elimination final. The Eagles drew a rare leadoff walk from Bjella and turned it into the only earned run she allowed all postseason. 

While Bjella locked in from there, holding New Ulm without a hit all game long and walking just one more batter, the first-inning run was all the Eagles needed to end the Tigers season. It marked the fourth time in four matchups on the season that New Ulm had defeated Marshall despite the Tigers outhitting the Eagles.

“It was really tough, especially losing to them four times, basically all in the same way,” Bjella said. “But they’re a good softball team. Yeah, it was a tough loss, but they’re a great team so not much we can really do. We gave it all we got.”

Bjella finishes her career as a Marshall High School pitcher with a school-record 559 strikeouts. While her softball legacy is cemented, she’ll look to build a new one as she continues her volleyball career as a right side hitter at Minnesota State University in the fall.