40 strikeouts in 1 day gets Tri-West softball ace Audrey Lowry into rarified 1,000-K club

Audrey Lowry was vibing Saturday. The temperatures were ideal and Tri-West was back at Linton-Stockton, where the Oklahoma-bound senior had shut down the host Miners and Corydon Central during the same triangular last season. She arrived determined to post two quality performances after struggling with late-inning consistency in recent starts, and set out looking to put more spin on her pitches.

Lowry set the tone with a "really good" warm-up, then struck out the first three Linton-Stockton hitters on nine pitches.

"Did that really just happen?" a mystified Lowry asked first baseman Ava Hensley.

Uh, yeah.

Fab 15: Sectional outlook for Central Indiana's top teams

Homers, gems and steals: Vote for IndyStar softball players of the week (May 6-11)

Lowry's first career immaculate inning was a harbinger of things to come.

The Miners did not make contact until the fourth and did not put the ball in play until the seventh, when the leadoff hitter bunted, ending a run of 18 consecutive strikeouts. Lowry K'd the next two batters to close out her first seven-inning perfect game.

"I was just throwing the ball, I wasn't aiming it," she said. "My rise ball was working extremely well, my changeup, all my pitches were working really well and I was throwing hard."

Final line: 7 innings (79 pitches-63 strikes), 0 hits, 0 runs, 0 walks, 20 strikeouts; 3-for-3 with a grand slam, a sacrifice fly and five RBIs. Then as an encore, she spun a two-hit shutout vs. Corydon Central with 20 strikeouts to clear 1,000 Ks for her career.

Unbelievable.

"I think that's the best day I've ever seen her throw it," coach Mike Miller said of Lowry, who's 15-2 this season with a 0.58 ERA, 232 strikeouts and only six walks over 121.2 innings. "I'm not so sure she couldn't have thrown a third game. She was smooth. She was in her rocking chair, if you want to call it that, and her pitches were moving tremendously."

As Lowry mowed through the L-S lineup, the Tri-West dugout began buzzing.

Nine up, nine down, on 33 pitches.

Nobody's touched the ball yet.

"Just let her throw. Don't talk to her about it," Miller told his players. He kept it business as usual with Lowry, too, checking in between every inning to make sure she felt OK to continue — the same as it would've been if she only had two strikeouts.

It wasn't until the top of the sixth — an inning after Lowry's grand slam pushed the score to 6-0 — that she acknowledged what was happening.

Am I about to have a perfect game with 21 strikeouts? 

"Mike was super excited," Lowry said. "He was like, what do we do? Do we take you out, because they can't hit the ball and you're pitching again later today? I was like, no, I'll just stay in."

Indeed, the 21-strikeout perfect game is an ultra-rare feat.

A few high schoolers have come close in recent years, including Guerin Catholic's Izzy Kemp (now at Dayton) and Roncalli's Keagan Rothrock (Florida), both of whom pitched 20-strikeout perfect games. And it's only been done once at the NCAA Division I level: North Texas' Hope Trautwein in April 2021 (coincidentally, she played her last two seasons at OU).

Lowry joked her teammates were probably getting bored in the field, but they were ready when called into action in the bottom of the seventh with Hensley fielding the bunt and throwing over to Emma Charles for the out.

Credit to the batter for putting the ball in play, Lowry and Miller agreed.

Corydon Central made better contact against Lowry, picking up hits in the fourth and seventh innings, but the senior Southpaw maintained her dominance, registering 20 strikeouts and zero walks on 83 pitches.

Lowry needed 31 strikeouts to reach 1,000 for her career. She finished with 40, accomplishing her long-time goal in the fourth inning of game two.

"1,000 career strikeouts is a once-in-a-lifetime thing that not many high school or even college pitchers reach," said Lowry, who now ranks 10th all-time in IHSAA with 1,022 strikeouts (she had 13 Monday vs. North Montgomery).

"It was a really exciting moment," she continued. "When they stopped the game to celebrate and all my teammates ran out to give me a hug, I got really emotional. It was a really good moment (and) just a really fun day."

Tri-West is scheduled to close out the regular season Wednesday at Center Grove. It opens sectional play vs. Danville next week.

Follow Brian Haenchen on Twitter at @Brian_Haenchen.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Oklahoma softball commit Audrey Lowry gets 40 strikeouts in one day