After losing her 2024 season to injury, Northwestern’s pitcher is looking to make her mark in her final year of eligibility.
When Northwestern’s Lauren Boyd takes the field on Friday, it will be her first time in the pitcher’s circle in 623 days. For an ordinary person, 623 days feels like a while. For a collegiate athlete, it’s an eternity.
In the aftermath of Northwestern’s heartbreaking loss in the 2023 Tuscaloosa Super Regional, Boyd underwent an offseason procedure that prevented her from being able to throw through the entirety of the summer and fall. Although Boyd was primed for a massive role in a post-Danielle Williams world, and was coming off a career-best season where she posted an 8-4 record and 2.88 ERA, Northwestern wasn’t going to rush Boyd back to action.
“If she was going to have her last year, we wanted to make sure that it was going to be a full year and not just something that we rushed into,” said Michelle Gascoigne, Northwestern’s pitching coach. “I think it was really hard for her to finally make the decision because she is such a team player and doesn’t want to let the team down in any way but knowing she could come back and give more to the team this year helped her kind of get over that.”
After the emotions of a sidelined season settled, Boyd knew she would have to adapt to a new role in 2024 — one from the dugout. But as Gascoigne describes, the position as a vocal energy-giver was something outside the pitcher’s comfort zone.
“It’s funny because when she was young in her career I learned that when she’s starting the game she gets really locked in and serious and she doesn’t talk as much,” Gascoigne explained. “So it was definitely something that took a lot for her to do.”
But if you were in Northwestern’s dugout in 2024, you never would have known about Boyd’s usually-quiet in-game demeanor.
“After the game, she was tired, like you would have thought she played,” said Riley Grudzielanek, a sophomore pitcher.
Grudzielanek recalled a series against Purdue where the team was struggling and the energy of Boyd and Grace Nieto (Northwestern’s second baseman, who also missed all of 2024 with an injury) “won the game without even being on the field.”
Boyd’s impact from the sidelines went beyond being a spark-plug for the other players. Coach Kate Drohan said her leadership and softball IQ allowed her to contribute in other ways as well.
“She doesn’t miss anything in the dugout,” Drohan said. “There were some replays that we went to because of her where she came down like ‘You gotta do it.’”
But as Northwestern, fueled by Boyd’s leadership from the sidelines, surged to a 33-10 regular season record and third-straight Big Ten regular season crown, Boyd was preparing to make a return to the field in 2025.
“The first word I think of is resilient,” Grudzielanek said. “She just works. You don’t hear her complain. You hear about how she’ll do extra workouts. All she wants to do is work and get better for her team.”
Gascoigne said Boyd attacked the rehab process with “a ton of discipline.” Boyd still hadn’t thrown by the end of last spring, marking a full year since she had last pitched in that Alabama series. In Tuscaloosa, Boyd held a stacked Crimson Tide lineup to just one run and proved she could face the staunchest competition on the biggest stage. With the ultimate goal of being able to return to that level of play, Drohan saw a turning point as the offseason rolled from summer to fall into winter.
“There was definitely a shift,” Drohan said. “There was a rehab process where she was getting healthy and then there was a shift that I saw from her physically and mentally where she started competing again in the weight room and at practice.”
And for Boyd’s teammates and coaches, that reinvigorated competitiveness was a welcome site to see.
Grudzielanek described her fellow pitcher as “one of the most competitive people I know.” Drohan called her a “no-bullsh*t player” and “one of the most competitive people I’ve ever met.” In Northwestern’s new behind-the-scenes offseason video, Drohan said, “[Boyd] plays my daughter in [the board game] Sorry and she wants to kick her butt.”
Outside of that trademark fiery determination, if there’s another trait everyone mentions when talking about Lauren Boyd, it’s her softball IQ. Both Drohan and Gascoigne described the way the game has “slowed down for her” as she’s developed as a pitcher.
Without an ace in the form of a Danielle Williams or Ashley Miller for the first time in a half-decade, Northwestern will need that veteran expertise from Boyd in a pitching room full of young, albeit talented, pitchers. Boyd is the sole fifth-year player on a roster that is one of the youngest teams in the Big Ten in average age.
Gascoigne confirmed Boyd is at full strength heading into the season and her velocity is at 100%, but Northwestern won’t put too much on her shoulders right away.
When Boyd trots out to the circle on Friday, whether it be in the season-opener against Kennesaw State or the second leg of the doubleheader against No. 15 Missouri, Gascoigne acknowledged that there will be some extra adrenaline, especially considering Boyd didn’t pitch in fall ball.
“She’s not going to want it to be about her. She never will,” Gascoigne said. But when Boyd winds up and throws her first pitch in over 20 months, it won’t be an insignificant feat.
“It’s going to mean everything to her and the rest of our team,” Grudzielanek said. “Everyone on our team respects her in so many ways.”
So when Lauren Boyd strikes out her first batter in her final season wearing a Northwestern uniform and the crowd and dugout reaction is far more jubilant and boisterous than you’d typically expect from a run-of-the-mill punch-out, that’s why. Lauren Boyd will probably shrug it off and turn back to the mound, focused on producing the same result for the next batter, but that strikeout will have been the product of nearly two years of patience, strenuous physical rehab and unfazed resilience.