Hall of Fame Class of 2023 Lexie Elkins
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She's generally regarded as the best pure hitter in the history of UL's national-caliber softball program, but even that may not be high enough praise.
Long-time UL coach Yvette Girouard, who had already retired after stints with the Cajuns and at LSU, watched Lexie Elkins many times in person and in her frequent television assignments.
"Every time she walked up, she struck fear in the opposing pitcher," Girouard said, "and in the coach sitting in that other dugout. She was simply amazing."
Shellie Landry, whose career paralleled Elkins' 2014-16 Cajun stint and who was recently named a UL assistant coach, watched her even closer from a nearby spot in the lineup.
"If I got on base, all I had to do was trot. That was fun," Landry said. "If we got on base, she was going to hit us in. She was the most clutch player I ever played with, and a lot of fun to watch every single day."
Elkins, whose transformed from a pedestrian freshman year at Texas Tech to one of the nation's most feared hitters, became one of UL's most decorated athletes regardless of sport. A three-time All-America selection – twice on the first team – and a two-time winner of the James J. Corbett Award as the state of Louisiana's top female athlete, the Victoria, Texas, product still holds most of the Cajuns' career hitting marks.
It's because of that prowess at the plate that Elkins is being inducted into the UL Athletic Hall of Fame on Friday as part of the university's Homecoming celebration, one day before UL meets Sun Belt rival Georgia State in the annual Homecoming game. He will be inducted along with seven other former athletes, coaches and staff members in a 7:30 p.m. ceremony at Warehouse 535 in Lafayette.
Elkins still holds UL's record for career batting average at .430, one of only two players to hit over .400 for a career and a full 28 points better than the second-place figure. She slugged .989 in her career, also UL's all-time best and nearly 200 points higher than the second-place listing.
In her senior year in 2016, she hit .509, the highest batting average by 62 points in the history of a program that has produced dozens of high-level hitters.
"What made her special is she understood how her body worked mechanically," said Landry, herself a three-time All-Sun Belt Conference pick. "As a teammate she was phenomenal. We were always either talking softball, on the field hitting, hitting in the cages, every day."
What Elkins did best was deliver home runs. She still ranks fifth in NCAA history in home runs in a season (32) and third in home runs per game (0.59) as a junior when she led the nation in homers. Sidelined with an injury for one-third of her senior year, she still hit 19 homers in only 37 games. She holds two of the top four home-run seasons and has the top two slugging percentage seasons in school history – 1.130 in 2016 and 1.077 in 2015.
She's ninth in NCAA history in career slugging percentage with an .859 mark, which includes her first college season at Texas Tech. Notably, she would be the NCAA's all-time slugging leader with that .989 mark (Jocelyn Alo of Oklahoma holds the record at .987) if only her UL years were included.
Her freshman year at Texas Tech was unremarkable – a .282 average with no home runs, only eight extra-base hits and only 21 RBI in 47 games and 42 starts. But significantly, she had only seven strikeouts all season, two times fewer than any other Red Raider.
"The thing that people forget is not only could she hit the home run, she could hit for average," Girouard said. "You certainly wanted to face her where she could only hurt you with a single digit rather than a crooked number. What she did after transferring from Texas Tech is a testament to her hard work."
"We'd welcomed her because we could see how hard she was willing to work," Landry said. "I was already hanging with Haley Hayden (also a four-time All-Sun Belt selection) doing extra work, and she (Elkins) got in that mix. We were the three-headed monster that stood together. We'd all go hit together … it may have been seen as extra work from the outside looking in, but for us it was just a blast. I'd do that all over again today."
Elkins was a two-time National Fastpitch Coaches Association Catcher of the Year along with the three All-America honors, and was the Sun Belt Conference's Player of the Year in all three of her UL seasons, along with being the league's Newcomer of the Year after her 2014 sophomore season.
She was also a three-time All-Louisiana selection, Newcomer of the Year in 2014 and the state's Hitter of the Year in 2014 and 2016.
Elkins led UL to a 137-31 record in her three seasons including a Women's College World Series berth in 2014 (her two homers accounted for all of UL's runs in the WCWS), three straight NCAA Regional titles and two other trips to the NCAA Super Regionals.
She was the first draft pick in the National Pro Fastpitch League in 2016, recording a home run in her first professional at-bat for the Pennsylvania Rebellion, before moving into coaching with stops as a graduate assistant at UL, a two-year stint at Mississippi State for an NCAA Regional team, and two years as hitting coach at Houston.
"When I was struggling with certain pitches and certain movements, she was always able to help," Landry said. "She had an awareness in her swing, she had really good touch and was so mechanically sound. We preached about the power of us, one through nine in the lineup it was going to happen and that let our pitchers and our defense play and pitch free, knowing we were going to have that clutch moment. And she had a lot of those."
