North Jersey softball star back in the game after an injury derailed her Olympic dream
Sophia Underfer has tamed mountains on skis and thrown out baserunners with her powerful arm. Who knew that powderpuff football would be her biggest obstacle?
The Indian Hills senior catcher is back in the lineup this year after missing the entire 2023 season with a torn ACL in her right knee.
Anterior cruciate ligament injuries are unfortunately pretty common for female high school athletes, but Underfer has a unique story that starts on snow, spends a lot of time in the dirt, and takes a tragic twist on turf.
But that twist was not fatal, and Underfer’s resolve to return can’t be denied.
“My whole life, knees have been such a worry, because I was a catcher,” Underfer said. “And in ski racing, knees are so important. My dad would always tell me if I hurt my knee, I would know. So I knew exactly what had happened.”
Born to ski
The Franklin Lakes resident started skiing when she was 2 years old. She started competing when she was 5. Originally, her goal was to just be better than her older brother John, but then it became bigger. She was talented, successful and getting better.
Underfer competed at the state and regional level. (There is high school skiing in New Jersey, but it’s small.) She trained every winter on Copper Mountain in Colorado. She went to camps in Austria twice.
“Her Dad would send me videos of her skiing,” Indian Hills softball coach Joe Leicht said. “He said she was successful in winning the events and I was told that she was hopeful of the Olympics someday. I know she would leave for parts of the year for special training with her skiing.”
At the U-16 state competition, Underfer finished first in both the slalom and giant slalom competitions. She went on to regionals, where her best finish was 10th.
With the Braves softball team, a perennial state contender, she played junior varsity as a freshman and started in the outfield as a sophomore. Her future looked bright in both sports.
Cue the ominous music.
A bootleg play gone bad
“It was a powderpuff football fundraiser for breast cancer,” Underfer starts. “It was Nov. 8, 2022. It was a school thing. You could sign up for it. It was a bunch of girls.”
“In passing one day, Sophia asked me about playing on the flag football team,” Leicht said. “She said it looked like fun. I told her that, in some of the games I saw, some of the teams are really aggressive and do ‘a bit more’ than grabbing a flag. I knew she had an injury history – who wouldn't with skiing and playing catcher? – so I kind of said I did not think it was a good idea. I even said, prophetically, ‘it’s a bit more than powderpuff football.’”
Leicht wasn’t there to see it. Underfer was playing quarterback, and the team had practiced a play in which Underfer fakes a pitch out and keeps the ball, going the other way. Think a bootleg.
On the video, the play works. Underfer gets around the corner, a defender has an angle, she goes to juke/swivel her hips, and her right knee just collapses. People immediately start waving for medical attention.
“My ACL popped, and my bones collided, and I couldn’t really extend my leg for a while,” Underfer said.
Surgery came a month later. Rehab was hard. Underfer was used to always being on the go. Now she sat.
“This is not something I tell a lot of people, but I spent a lot of time watching videos of me playing softball and skiing,” Underfer said. “It was some sort of manifesting to push myself back to be better than before, and watching myself succeed was how I envision myself for the future.”
Underfer missed her entire junior softball season. She kept the scorebook for the Braves. “I told her she was an All-County scorekeeper,” Leicht said.
But skiing is different than softball. There’s no going easy on skis. You’re either full go, or no go. It took a full year before she was cleared to get back in the starting gate.
“I don’t think I did as well as I have done in the past, but I was only about a month fully cleared when I started racing again,” she said.
When the powderpuff football game came around again this year, "the clear answer was no,” she said. “I was an assistant coach and a strategist, so I got the T-shirt.”
Back on her feet
On the softball field, the Braves are looking for a shirt that reads "county champs." They'll play in Saturday's Bergen County quarterfinals at IHA, taking on Paramus Catholic.
“Softball has always been the place for me to be the leader that I like to be and show on the field what I can do and what I have trained to do,” Underfer said.
She’s committed to playing softball at St. Michael’s College in Vermont, where she wants to study business administration. Yes, there are mountains nearby to ski, but she’s unsure of her competitive skiing future. She sounds content just to be an avid rec skier.
But her Olympic dream may not be totally dead.
Underfer – even though the name is German – is of Colombian heritage and has been invited to compete for the U-21 Colombian national team this summer in Brazil. It could lead to something bigger. The next chapter of the Underfer story is just getting underway.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Sophia Underfer: Star softball player, skier working back from injury
