By Robin Fambrough
Written for the LSWA
Courtney Blades Rogers wanted a change after two years in college softball.
Having been the Southland Conference Pitcher and Player of the Year as she led Nicholls to the 1998 Southland Conference championship as a pitcher and hitter, the Baton Rouge product sought new and different goals.
Rogers created her own “change,” and subsequently found her place in softball history.
She developed a changeup that baffled hitters during a record-setting run lifting her new team, the University of Southern Mississippi, to back-to-back Women’s College World Series.
“Courtney was already a very good pitcher and a tremendous athlete and competitor,” said Lu Harris-Champer, her college coach for a year at Nicholls and in both seasons at USM. “She had over 300 strikeouts two times (with the Colonels). Her work ethic and belief in herself and her teammates was always incredible.
“But the changeup … that was the difference. About three weeks into her junior year, we saw it the first time. And wow. She went from 300 strikeouts to 600 strikeouts. It was quite a ride for all of us.”
The accomplishments and numbers are undeniable. The Honda National Softball Pitcher of the Year in 2000, Rogers won 95 of 115 games for USM in 1999-2000. Two decades later, an NCAA.com columnist ranked her among the top 11 major college softball pitchers of all time, alongside prominent gold-standard greats like Cat Osterman of Texas, Arizona’s Jennie Finch, Monica Abbot of Tennessee and UCLA’s Lisa Fernandez.
Until this May, Rogers was the last pitcher to record a perfect game in the WCWS.
After striking out 497 batters as a junior, Rogers recorded 663 strikeouts as a senior, with 21 Ks in a 13-inning regional loss to LSU. She ended her career with NCAA records of 151 wins and 1,773 strikeouts. Rogers had 77 career shutouts and a 0.97 ERA.
Rogers was inducted into the Southern Miss Hall of Fame in 2006 and was the first softball inductee in the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame in 2012. Now she becomes only the second college softball player, behind UL Lafayette’s three-time (1992-94) All-American pitcher Kyla Hall Holas, to earn enshrinement in the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame.
She will be the only woman in an 11-member 2021 induction class honored Aug. 26-28 in Natchitoches. For information and participation opportunities, visit LaSportsHall.com or call 318-238-4255.
Ask Rogers about her career and the response is to recall memories, not dwell on individual accomplishments.
“Even to this day, it’s all a very humbling experience. To be honest with you, I never looked at myself and said, ‘Hey, I’m really good … not ever,’” Rogers said. “I just continued to work. Maybe my last year at Southern Miss, I looked at it and was pleased with what we had done.
“My approach was always this – it’s another game … spin the ball.”
Harris-Champer, who retired as head coach at Georgia after the WCWS in June, was Rogers’ coach in her freshman season at Nicholls, then when they reunited two years later at USM. The Golden Eagles were an unlikely success story worthy of a documentary all their own.
Equally compelling is Rogers’ story and its stunning parallels to the 2021 WCWS. Her daughter, Britton, was a freshman pitcher for Harris-Champer’s Georgia squad that made this year’s WCWS. There, Alabama ace Montana Fouts fashioned the first perfect game since Rogers’ twirled a 1-0 win over national power Arizona in 2000.
“We have group text for teammates and I think my text was ‘21 outs and 21 years later,’ ” said Dalenah Rule, Rogers’ former Southern Miss teammate. “And to have Courtney there and then for the TV cameras to show her in the stands … it was awesome.”
WCWS viewers were riveted by James Madison pitcher Odicci Alexander. The story of how Alexander practiced pitching to a strike zone painted on a concrete wall by her grandfather became part of the WCWS lore in 2021.
Rogers did the same thing decades earlier. She played shortstop on a softball team her mother, Margaretta, coached as a 4-year-old and fell in love with the sport and became a pitcher by the time she was 10.
“I would pitch at home up against the wall because nobody wanted to catch for me,” Rogers recalls. “There would be marks in my front yard, broken windows and all that kind of stuff. At one point, I had a strike zone with a hole cut out. When the ball would go through the hole, it went into a bucket.
“I loved softball so much and wanted to play all the time. I was always moving my arm in a circular motion. I tell the players I coach today to do that too. But I also tell them to be careful and not break anything around the house.”
She coaches and manages an age-group softball program in the Houston area where her family moved four years ago. Her husband, Chad Rogers, is a former USM baseball pitcher.
Ben Guidry, a legendary fastpitch coach in the Baton Rouge area, was Rogers’ first tutor. The walls of the clubhouse building at Guidry’s Patriots softball complex are filled with pictures of girls who earned college scholarships.
“You can collect a lot of trophies in a sport, but I consider them (pitchers) to be my trophies,” Guidry said. “Courtney is one of them. Her accomplishments speak for themselves.”
As Rogers grew, so did her love for softball. She practiced twice a day, typically six days a week for her Denham Springs-based age-group team, the Stingers.
Playing for Belaire High School added intangibles. Rogers was a four-time all-state selection and led her team to the LHSAA state tournament once while competing in a powerhouse Class 5A district.
“I remember Paula Lee. I love that woman,” Rogers said of her high school coach. “She was hard and obviously she was a basketball coach. But … there was a different expectation because of her.
“I remember one day she came out to the field after basketball practice and we did not have things up … like putting out the bases. She made us run. She was big on discipline.”
Lee, now the women’s basketball coach at Baton Rouge Community College, reaffirms Rogers’ story.
“Coaching Courtney Blades was an experience I treasure,” Lee said. “She was a tremendous competitor and one of the most dedicated athletes I have ever been around. I did not know softball. So, I brought discipline and commitment.
“Courtney asked me once if I wanted to call the pitches. I had her pitching and Hope Papenburg catching. I told her, ‘No, do what you do … I don’t want to mess you up.’”
Rogers was not heavily recruited, which was an advantage for Harris-Champer, who was re-stocking the Nicholls roster.
“I always told my parents I never planned to come back to live in Baton Rouge and I have been true to that,” Rogers said. “But at first, it was good that I was in Thibodaux. I was an hour and a half away. If I wanted to come home, I could.
“The softball aspect of it, once I got into a routine, was fine. I think there were six pitchers on the roster. I was used to practicing a lot. Practicing four hours a day, six days a week was hard.”
Learning a college role involved bullpen sessions with then graduate assistant Leslie Efferson-Yellott, now softball coach at Denham Springs High. Efferson-Yellott was told to teach Rogers two pitches – the rise and changeup.
Rogers quickly carved out a lead role for herself on the Nicholls staff before an injury cut her first season short.
“Was I surprised by Courtney’s success? Not at all. Lu (Harris-Champer) wanted me to work with the pitchers on the things I learned from her the year before,” Efferson-Yellott said. “She picked up everything we taught her easily.
“Courtney was incredibly athletic. She could field her position better than most pitchers. She could have played another position. Lu was afraid to let her bat because she might get hurt. She hit a dinger (home run) in her only at-bat.”
After two seasons at Nicholls, Rogers sought the change in scenery and at the same time, soon found that all-important changeup. Ultimately, she chose Southern Miss, where Harris-Champer was eagerly waiting.
The Golden Eagles played their games at a public park in Hattiesburg.
There were multiple transfer players on the roster. Rogers was one of four Nicholls transfers. Rule was one of several Mississippi players who had never played fastpitch softball.
“Nobody knew anybody or who played what. It was a team of girls from all over the place,” Rogers recalled. “The first team meeting we sat there and looked at each other, sizing each other up.
“Every team has its problems, but we bonded. There were a lot of things we did not have that other programs had. But we had each other’s backs.”
Rogers planned to redshirt that first year. But she changed her mind during a fall road trip to Missouri. When Rogers told Harris-Champer she did not want to redshirt, she was told she was starting the first game minutes later. The Golden Eagles upset Missouri, ushering in a new era.
“Courtney was more than just a great pitcher … she was the best teammate,” Rule said. “We put our trust in her and she trusted us. It’s a bond we have to this day.”
Rogers was 43-6 that first year and led the Golden Eagles past LSU and to a first WCWS berth in 1999. She then played for USA Softball that summer.
“Going from high school to college, the circle is at 43 feet, not 40 and it is an adjustment,” said Ashley Lewis Rush, a former Central High and LSU pitcher who squared off against Rogers from the time they played youth softball. “The ball breaks differently and it is tough for a lot of pitchers to adjust. But I think it worked for Courtney.
“And once she got with coach Lu and added those pitches … especially that changeup … she was amazing. Add that changeup and it was lights out.”
There were growing pains that second season. Southern Miss made the trek west to play national power Arizona early in the season and struggled. She said it led people to ask her boyfriend, now husband, “What’s wrong with Courtney?” before the team got back to Hattiesburg.
But the Golden Eagles went to work and evolved. Rogers finished 52-7 (an NCAA record for wins in a season) with that 1-0 perfect game win over an Arizona lineup that included Finch, the future Olympic star, as an infielder.
“We were not the same team that played Arizona early in the year and that made a difference,” Rogers said. “I knew I was good enough to beat them, but realistically knew nobody expected that.
“I still have a stomach ache to this day, when my (summer) team takes the field and when Britton pitches. But for me, that was just another game, which is who I am. I never made it bigger than it was.”