The Tennessee Lady Vols softball program has fielded some of the best pitching staffs in college softball over the years. In 2026, Tennessee finished with the top staff in the country at a 1.47 ERA and ranked in the top five in strikeouts with 499.
That staff, led by the trio of Karlyn Pickens, Sage Mardjetko and Erin Nuwer, showed what it takes to be a Lady Vol in more ways than just on-field performance. Only one pitcher stands in the circle at a time, and what this group showed more than most is selflessness. Putting the team’s needs before their own while being each other’s biggest supporters is what fosters a healthy culture.
That all starts in recruiting. Lady Vols associate head coach Megan Rhodes Smith and head coach Karen Weekly look for people who are not only good fits for the system, but in every aspect of being on the team.
“What we try to look for and accomplish recruiting wise is not just to find people who are good fits,” Rhodes Smith said. “We want people to fit the culture, but also to fit each other well. To me that is one of the really neat things. When you look at Karlyn and Sage and Erin, they were so very different, but each really has something very special about them that we were able to build off of and then play off of among the three of them. That’s always the goal, to find some different looks and to find competitors, and then people who are selfless and can ride that line of, I want the ball, but I’m really happy for the person who has it if it’s not me.”
For Rhodes Smith, coaching in that kind of room comes a little more naturally. She pitched for Weekly at Tennessee from 2005 to 2008, where she appeared in three Women’s College World Series. After coaching stops elsewhere, she returned to Knoxville in June 2020.
“Karen has such a wonderful culture of openness and hard work,” Rhodes Smith said. “As somebody who played for her, I find it a little easier to prepare pitchers in that environment because I know what she expects of them and I know how to help them be prepared to do that.”
No name carried more weight on the most recent staff than Pickens. Her fastball made her one of the most recognizable arms in the country, but Rhodes Smith pointed to the way she carried herself as the thing that set the tone for everyone around her.
“Having that person as our senior anchor of the staff last year, it just trickles down so well,” Rhodes Smith said. “People always say, when your superstar is your hardest worker, your team’s in a great spot. I would say the same thing when your superstar is humble, when your superstar is always showing up to get better. She’s trusting the decisions made, and it’s not all about her, so I think it’s easier for other people to be the same.”
With Pickens gone, a lot of eyes turn to Mardjetko. Plenty of people who watched Tennessee last year would argue that at times she was the best pitcher on the staff, and she comes into the 2027 season as one of the two experienced returners. Rhodes Smith likes where her head already is. Mardjetko’s mind is already on improvements to her craft.
“What I love about Sage was that she was already thinking about that,” Rhodes Smith said. “She was already excited about, hey, what if I did this and played with this pitch in this way? We’re looking for wrinkles at this point. I definitely want her to be in the best shape she can be because she was coming off her labrum surgery. If you go back and look at her innings in February, we were very limited with what we could do with her. We were very much in the buildup phase.”
That buildup makes the coming fall a big one. Mardjetko spent last fall rehabbing her hip instead of throwing, and getting that healthy came first. Rhodes Smith said the way she handled a spring without a normal ramp-up told her plenty. Most pitchers would have panicked at the idea of missing a full fall of work, and there was a moment where Mardjetko wondered what was coming, but she pushed through it without flinching.
“The most incredible thing she did was, most pitchers would freak out at the knowledge that they didn’t get to work all fall,” Rhodes Smith said. “But she just went for it, and did so very fearlessly. It was neat to see what that little flip did for her of, you know what, I’m just going to go do the best I can and let the chips fall where they may. She played with such joy and freedom all year that it becomes more exciting to say, then let’s build off of that great mentality and add a wrinkle here or a wrinkle there.”
The next step for Mardjetko is not about reinventing anything. It is about sharpening what is already there, and Rhodes Smith knows exactly where those gains show up.
“I do think there are some moments where if she is a little more pinpoint with a certain pitch or a location, that can be a game changer for her,” Rhodes Smith said. “That’s not a massive thing. Nobody’s going to see that in February and be like, wow, they’ve really worked on that. But that’s one of those things that is going to show up in the postseason when you’re against somebody like Katie Stewart. She’s really good, and you need your best stuff every single time you face her. I think it’s going to show up in moments like that.”
One of the most distinctive pitches in Mardjetko’s arsenal is a changeup that seems to fall off a cliff, dropping from the upper 60s into the 40s. She calls it an offspeed drop, and Rhodes Smith said it does not behave like a traditional one.
“If you think about what a traditional offspeed is, it’s not what she would think of as an offspeed,” Rhodes Smith said. “Typically offspeeds sit eight to 10 miles an hour difference. She has such good spin on it that once she gets it in the air, it looks like a ball. People don’t really want to swing at it because it probably is crossing them a little bit high, but then it drops in as a strike. It’s a neat pitch, and there’s an art to making sure we call it enough but not too much, because we want it to continue to surprise and frustrate.”
The pitch is confusing enough that it does not just fool hitters. Umpires sometimes are confused by the pitch. That is something I picked up during the Super Regionals against Georgia. It took a minute for Mardjetko to get that call.
“Sometimes you have to watch her talk an umpire into it, or the catcher has to talk them into it,” Rhodes Smith said. “I think it shocks them at first.”
For all the talk of what she throws, the biggest question around Mardjetko may be what happens between her ears now that she is the number one heading into next season. Rhodes Smith said the challenge is keeping her away from expectations, her own included.
“Nobody plays well when they’re focused on expectations,” Rhodes Smith said. “I want her to be able to ride the line between, I’m motivated and goal oriented and I want to do the best I can, and not get caught up in other people’s expectations, or even her expectations of what this year should look like. Rather, it’s going to be a hard year because every year is hard, and that’s what happens in the SEC. I just want her focused on, what do I need to do to be great? What do I need to do to win? How am I going to be the best Sage I can be today?”
The other returning anchor is Nuwer, who grew into bigger roles last season. The numbers do not tell the whole story with her, but the makeup does. Rhodes Smith called her one of the most determined people she knows, and someone who understands her own craft at a deep level.
“It’s fun to talk pitching with Erin because she has a really deep knowledge of what she does and why she does it and what it’s feeling like,” Rhodes Smith said. “She’s very intelligent about her craft. From that confidence standpoint, I think you really saw her confidence grow last fall.”
Nuwer caught my eye last fall as well. She was consistent and diligent in her work, and that was a big confidence builder heading into the 2026 spring.
“She got to step into some of those big games and get the big start, the big closing, and at times that comes with hard moments,” Rhodes Smith said. “We have to have all of that experience in order to grow, and she had all of those experiences this year. I couldn’t be more excited about those two really being the anchor of the staff.”
With two experienced arms leading the way, the offseason work looks different than it does for a younger pitcher. Rhodes Smith said the decision to add a pitch or refine an existing one depends entirely on where a pitcher already is.
“We definitely spend time in the summer and fall exploring, okay, what does that next step look like?” Rhodes Smith said. “What’s available to us? Sometimes there’s some low hanging fruit that’s going to be really profitable, and you go for that. Other times you realize you’ve reached a point where the next step isn’t going to be super obvious, and we’re going to have to put a lot of effort in to go a little ways. We try to have those conversations when we get there.”
A lot of that planning comes from looking backward before looking forward. Rhodes Smith said she likes to sit down at the end of a season and break down how the staff fared against righties and lefties, how each pitch performed, and whether there was something they simply did not throw enough. Those answers shape the next fall. If a pitcher struggles with lefties, they will see as many lefties as possible. If a pitch needs more trust, they will throw it until it feels usable in any count.
“It’s not always adding a pitch. Sometimes it is,” Rhodes Smith said. “Sometimes it’s building on what you have, but at other times it’s just learning to really use what you have effectively.”
As for the specific wrinkles she has handed Mardjetko and Nuwer this summer, Rhodes Smith kept those close to the vest, and understandably so. Sometimes plans don’t pan out and things go in a different direction. But do know that the conversations and attention to details are active.
Behind the two anchors sits a group of arms Weekly herself pointed to as pitchers ready to take a step. Maddi Rutan and Peyton Hardenburger both saw time last season, and Rhodes Smith said the big thing for them is execution.
“For any of them, it is crucial that we execute at a high level,” Rhodes Smith said. “That’s where, if they grow in that area, you’ll see them really starting to reach their potential. The neat thing about Maddi is that she loves the big moment, she loves games. She is a gamer, and you can see it when you watch her pitch. She is having the best time out there.
“For her it’s, how do we continue growing in the moments that are less exciting so that your stuff is even better in the moments where you’re just turning it on and going for it? She’s got a lot of experience, and I think that’s really going to help her. She’s not afraid, she doesn’t back down from a challenge. Every time you send her out to the circle, you know she’s going to compete, and I love that.”
Hardenburger’s path has been tougher. A torn ACL cost her a fall of development, and she was thrown into spring action with almost none of the usual buildup. She and Mardjetko grew close going through rehab together on the sidelines. But where most pitchers get to face their own team and feel out the level before the spring, Hardenburger got none of that and was thrown into the fire.
“I loved her hunger for every opportunity, and she didn’t back down either,” Rhodes Smith said. “She came in at the end of the year and was like, tell me what I have to do, I want this, tell me what I’ve got to do. I love that, because you want that mentality in the circle. She’s getting after it this summer, and I’m really excited for her to actually have a fall to develop and fail and grow and succeed, and then we start the cycle all over again.”
Tennessee also welcomes two freshmen into the room in Bailee Shelton and Maggie Krause. A bit to my surprise, Rhodes Smith is not interested in easing them in slowly. She wants everyone on the staff to be ready.
“The neat thing is that we don’t care how old you are,” Rhodes Smith said. “I want them to come in and hit the ground running. They were recruited for a reason. They’re good pitchers. They have their own special gifts, so it’s going to be really exciting to compete together this fall and compete against each other, because I want to see how their stuff plays at that next level and see what direction we want to take for them. We’ll let their roles develop as we go.”
Shelton brings an added dimension. Like Rutan before her, she profiles as a two-way player, and Rhodes Smith said fans may see her outside the circle.
“The really neat thing about Shelton is that she really is a utility, very similar to Maddi,” Rhodes Smith said. “She’s a good hitter, she’s a good player in the field, so you may see her outside of the circle as well.”
The two-way road is not an easy one at Tennessee, and Rhodes Smith made clear it is not something the staff hands out. It is something a pitcher has to earn and, more than that, choose to keep chasing.
“It’s funny, people ask us a lot because they don’t see our pitchers hitting, so they assume, oh, your pitchers, you almost don’t let them hit,” Rhodes Smith said. “We do. It’s just very incumbent on the pitcher. It’s a lot of work to pitch and hit in the SEC at this level. It’s not for the faint of heart. A lot of times pitchers come in intending to do it, and about a month in they’re like, I want no part of this, I’m just going to pitch, because they realize how much work it is. It’s always, here’s what it’s going to look like, here’s what you have to do, if you want it, go get it.”
No conversation about a pitching staff is complete without the catcher, and Elsa Morrison stepped into that role as a freshman and never looked back. Rhodes Smith said watching her adjust to three very different arms was one of the joys of the season.
“It was a joy to watch Elsa take every challenge and continue to push herself, because we could argue they were the best staff in the nation,” Rhodes Smith said. “To walk in and catch those girls, and by the way, all three are very different, physically in what you’re going to receive and how you need to frame it, but also mentally. By the end of the year she realized, I think I’m a different catcher with each of the girls. I told her, as you should be, that means you’re being really great at your job. It’s your job to adapt to them, and I thought she did an excellent job of accepting that challenge.”
That growth showed up in the small things over the course of the year.
“You could see at the beginning of the year, when somebody misses at 75, when they don’t hit their spot, that’s hard, so you saw a lot more balls getting by her early on,” Rhodes Smith said. “Then she learned to read their misses a little bit better, learned to stay on her toes, and by the end of the year I thought she was a totally different catcher. She had grown so much. She’s got the arm, she’s got the framing, she’s kind of the total package, and she hasn’t even reached her potential. We’re ready to get back in and grind it out.”
For Rhodes Smith, this coming season carries a new title. Weekly named her associate head coach, an elevation that meant more because she never went looking for it. Her ties to the program run back to her playing days, and that history is not lost on her.
“I was very honored, because it wasn’t something I was asking her for or pushing her for,” Rhodes Smith said. “She has been a really wonderful mentor in the realm of helping me work to be great at what I’m doing right now, and then continuing to ask me, where do you want to get better, how do you want to grow this year, and then giving me opportunities to do so. I was very honored when she offered that to me. I love this program and want to see it be great and continue to be great, because I’ve been a part of it since 2005. It definitely means a lot to me, and anything to support her and the program is what I’m here for.”
The circle looks different heading into 2027 without Pickens anchoring it. But between two proven returners, hungry experienced depth, a pair of freshmen who will be ready to compete, and a catcher just scratching her ceiling, Rhodes Smith has plenty to work with. Expect the Lady Vols’ staff to continue setting the bar.
