The closer: Missouri softball pitcher Taylor Pannell nears NCAA D-I saves record
It’s simple, really.
Lee’s Summit West High coach Eric Doane has seen it before. Missouri softball fans are watching it live this season; watching potential history in action.
Taylor Pannell doesn’t know any other way.
“She’s just a bulldog, man,” Doane said. “I mean, I could tell you story after story about her.”
So, he did.
Meanwhile, in front of Missouri eyes, Pannell is creating another story worth telling.
Pannell, the Tigers’ sophomore closer, has 14 saves this season. One more — which could very well come at Mizzou Softball Stadium this weekend as No. 7 national seed Missouri hosts Washington, Indiana and Omaha for the NCAA Columbia Regional — and she will tie the NCAA Division-I single-season record.
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The previous high in the sport was set by Mallory Aldred, who had 15 saves for Canisius in 2008. During the 2024 SEC Softball Tournament, Pannell passed the Missouri single-season record set by Kacey Marshall with 12 in 1994.
“I mean, to have a sophomore that wants that role, you know, it's exciting,” Anderson said on March 23 when Pannell recorded a second straight save to take a series from LSU. “She's energetic when she's out there. She's extremely competitive and is so unbelievably confident. So, to have somebody coming out of the bullpen like that is tremendous.”
Was this — a potentially historic season at the top level of the college game — always written in the stars?
“There’s no way,” Doane said. “No, I didn't think she had that in her, to be honest. She probably did, but I didn't see it at that point.”
No, Doane wasn’t awestruck by Pannell in her early days in Lee’s Summit. She struggled with control. Doane wasn’t sure if she would have the velocity in her pitch to compete at the highest levels.
But she did have one unteachable and invaluable trait. He saw that right away.
“She just flat out loves to compete,” Doane said. … “You see it in a lot of athletes, but you’ve gotta go, ‘Well, how bad do you want it?’
“With her, she wants it pretty damn bad.”
As a rising freshman, Pannell approached Doane with a request for his Lee’s Summit West team.
She thought she was ready to come and pitch for the Titans’ varsity squad.
That didn’t quite materialize. Lofty as her goals were, she didn’t have much of a shot at the starting pitcher gig in her rookie year of high school. That’s because of a familiar name ahead of her: Former Missouri starter and Lee’s Summit West grad Jordan Weber.
So, Pannell went to JV.
That didn’t go hiccup-less, either.
Doane made a habit of rewarding junior varsity players who had shown promise by bringing them to an end-of-season tournament — typically the Kewpie Classic hosted by Columbia-based Hickman High.
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He wanted to take Pannell. With Weber soon headed to the Tigers, he knew Pannell was probably his future in the circle. But …
“She had a really rough, rough freshman year,” Doane said.
So, the coach offered her a deal: Go play in a weekend tournament, I’ll watch and if you do well, you can come to Columbia.
The tournament, and Pannell’s tryout, rolled around.
“She knows this is her shot to go on an out-of-town trip,” Doane said, “and she throws freakin’ lights out. Just mowing kids down. Nasty changeup. And I'm like, ‘where the hell has that been?’”
That was an important lesson for both Pannell and her high school coach. In the biggest moments, they could count on it coming. Doane thinks that was a big day in her mental development in the sport. He saw the sheer will to win for the first time, but not the last.
That doggedness reared through Pannell’s senior campaign when a group that the coach wasn’t entirely sure about went all the way with the future Missouri closer in the circle.
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In the 2021 Class 5 District 7 title game against Lee’s Summit North, Pannell was matched up against her current MU teammate Cierra Harrison.
With her team up one run, Pannell had put two players on base. She then hit the opponent’s best batter to load them.
“This is where that Bulldog mentality comes in,” Doane said. “She hits their best hitter and then proceeds to get a 1-2-3 groundout double play to end the inning.”
District secured.
In the next game in the Class 5 tournament against current Missouri teammates Kayley Lenger and Katie Chester and their Liberty North squad, Pannell hit another batter with two runners already aboard in a one-run game in the seventh inning.
Rinse, repeat: She struck out the next two to end the game and keep the Titans marching.
“She's giving me a heart attack,” Doane said. … “I'm like, ‘what the hell are you doing? Why are you hitting them?’ She says, ‘Coach, I had already struck those kids out three times each.’”
And in the title game — in a one-run seventh — Pannell did what she showed she’s prone to do. Lee’s Summit West, five runs down, tied the championship in the bottom of the sixth.
Six Pannell pitches later, they were back on offense and walking the championship off.
“She just kept coming in saying, ‘Stay in it, we're good. We're gonna hold them, let's keep battling,’” Doane said. “And our bats got better and our at-bats got better. And then we go and tie it and we go out and win the dang thing in the bottom of seventh. (Pannell) was always a big part of all of that.”
Doane keeps a close eye on Pannell and Missouri. He watched all of their SEC Tournament run, which saw Missouri knock off No. 13-seeded Ole Miss, No. 4-seed Arkansas and No. 8-LSU en route to the championship, where MU fell to No. 2 Florida. Pannell closed the door in all three of MU’s wins, including two saves.
He’s impressed with what coach Larissa Anderson and staff have done with Pannell in two short years. She always had a “nasty” changeup that goes 64 miles per hour but looks 68. Doane said she can throw that for a strike any time she wants.
But Pannell’s high school coach is seeing more velocity on the fastball; less reliance on the rise ball she used to “live off;” a curveball that didn’t exist before. Technical perfection was never the pitcher’s M.O.
“I think there was a line of doubters out there, and that doesn't (sit) well for her,” Doane said. “I mean, she's a very confident young lady that has a lot of belief in what she's doing, and I think that this is an opportunity to prove a lot of people wrong and showcase her talent — and I think there’s a lot of it.”
The record is getting close. One more save and Pannell will be tied at the top of the all-time NCAA list.
“This is my role on the team, so I'm really just out there, and I try to calm everything,” Pannell said March 23, after one of her 14 saves to this point. “I don't want to hear any background noise. It's just me and (catcher) Julia (Crenshaw), and I'm just out there to get the job done.”
The job now is the NCAA Regional. If the Tigers make it through this weekend over Washington, Indiana and Omaha, they’re staying in Columbia and at Mizzou Softball Stadium to host the winner of the NCAA Durham Regional headlined by No. 10 Duke.
If it ever gets close, it’s Pannell’s circle.
And it’s become pretty clear what that entails.
“You know, things wouldn't go well and she just didn't know any other way than to just work hard,” Doane said. … “You're not going to find anybody that wants to compete more than her.”
This article originally appeared on Columbia Daily Tribune: Missouri softball's Taylor Pannell on brink of NCAA D-I saves record
