KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – Tennessee softball head coach Karen Weekly may have a good problem on her hands. This Lady Vols squad looks to be more improved at the plate. While only nine can make the lineup, the team seems to have good depth. As Weekly mentioned on Sunday, if a player gets sick or hurt, she still has to make a lineup card. And someone has to be ready to step in and get the job done.
“You’ve gotta have plan B, C, D and E,” Weekly said. “So when we’re moving people around, that’s a lot of trying to figure that one out, all the what if scenarios.”
With the amount of returners on the team, there are positions that are quite naturally taken. While there is always great competition, we know that Elsa Morrison will be starting behind the dish as catcher. That is common knowledge, but if she were to miss for some reason, there is a freshman catcher that has caught the attention of anyone that’s watched this fall in Avary Stockwell.
Weekly has talked about Stockwell a few times this fall, and she always leads with how coachable the freshman from Mount Juliet, Tennessee is.
“She’s really coachable,” Weekly said. “She’s listening. She’s taking in all the information. She’s learning and making adjustments.”
Weekly also likes how Stockwell handles the tough days. There is a lot that goes into being a catcher at this level, and it is easy for a freshman to get buried under all of it. That hasn’t been the case with the 2025 Tennessee Gatorade Player of the Year.
“What I like about her is that a lot gets thrown at you as a catcher, and she’s not allowing it to overwhelm her,” Weekly said. “So even when she has a practice where it seems like a lot of things haven’t gone right, she’ll still walk off the field with a smile and a good attitude.”
The thing about Stockwell is she may very well crack the lineup in the DP role when the season arrives. This fall, the freshman has shown her power and is near the top in home runs for the Lady Vols.
“She’s definitely in the mix,” Weekly said on Sunday. “She might be close to leading us in home runs this fall. I’m not quite sure, but I know she was up there at one point in time. So you kind of see that power show itself as often as it has. She’s definitely battling to be in that mix, for sure.”
With continued development with associate head coach Ehren Earleywine, Stockwell could set herself up to be a dangerous contributor for this lineup. She has already noticed the difference.
“He’s been great to work with, really helping me with my swing, just critiquing a few things so I can be at my max,” Stockwell told me on Sunday. “That also plays into the weight room, too. Coach Rhett’s got us working hard, getting a lot stronger, and obviously I want to contribute any way that I can, especially at the plate.”
The pitching staff has taken notice too. Erin Nuwer, who is set to take on a bigger role in the circle this spring, didn’t need many words to sum up the freshman catcher.
“She’s great. She’s a wall back there,” Nuwer said. “She’s really funny. She has a great sense of humor, so she keeps it light. Yeah, it’s been really nice.”
With Morrison back as the starting catcher, she’s also been a great teammate by helping Stockwell pick up on things.
“She’s helped me a lot in a lot of different ways,” Stockwell said. “Sometimes it’ll be reads from the outfield, like where the ball should go. Sometimes it’ll be just how we do things around here. She’s just been really more like a big sister to me, and I really appreciate it.”
That shows the chemistry and leadership that this team has, and is another reason I look for this team to be ultra-successful in 2027. Whether it’s at DP, behind the plate when needed or both, Stockwell is a name to keep an eye on when the Lady Vols open the season.
