Sports

Born and raised by softball

Baillie Lott was born in Nashville, Tenn., as the only daughter of four children. Growing up, she spent a lot of time with her brothers, Kris, Clint and Dylan, whom she said she is now able to appreciate.

‘It’s nice to have big brothers to look up to and look after you,’ Lott said. ‘I have one brother closer to my age, so we get along a lot better now (that we’re older and) don’t argue as much.’

Another thing Lott has to thank her brothers for is the role they played in her discovery of softball.

‘All of my brothers played baseball, so I was out at the field when I was like two weeks old,’ she said. ‘I played softball since I was about 6. I have played other sports, but softball was always the sport that I loved.’

Lott played on local teams and spent summers with a traveling team, which she said gave her the opportunity to see many different states and face different teams before she even reached high school.

‘It was always for fun. I had a really good time doing it,’ she said. ‘Summer softball is very competitive. We travel all over the country, playing in different tournaments. It gave you a chance to see a lot of places that you wouldn’t normally get to see.’

Lott said one of her summer team coaches encouraged her to play the sport in high school and college.

‘I had a coach, when I was like 14, who was a college coach ‘hellip; and he was the one who got me started in the recruiting process,’ she said. ‘He was the one that started showing me and the rest of the team the ropes of what coaches look for. I probably didn’t really think about it until then.’

Lott continued to hone her skills at Brentwood High School, but said she did not focus on developing as a pitcher until her second year.

‘I’ve been pitching a long time, but I didn’t really start pitching competitively until I was like 12,’ she said. ‘Even until I was like 16 or 17, I still played other positions a little more. I became the No. 1 pitcher on my team, and I started getting more into it and working harder at it sophomore year.’

In 2007, Lott’s senior year of high school, she was named to the all-state team while looking for a place to continue growing athletically and academically. Lott said watching former Cougars pitcher Angel Shamlin’s success at UH – Shamblin is the school’s career leader in several categories, including wins (94) – inspired her to come to Houston.

‘I knew Angel was going to be a senior when I came, and I had room to grow,’ Lott said. ‘I felt the team was improving, the team has steadily gotten better, and that was something that really appealed to me. That’s something that spoke to me – it’s the way they’re building the program up.’

In her freshman year at UH, Lott held a 7-3 record with a 2.50 ERA and 49 strikeouts in 70 innings. As a sophomore, Lott, along with the team, is trying to defend Houston’s back-to-back Conference USA regular-season championships and make it three in a row.

‘We’re just trying to make our own way, and we’re still young, so we’re trying to get better every game,’ she said.

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