Deemed a “star pitcher” by MaxPreps, senior Lizzy Beutter is one of the best softball players in the Central Coast, Los Altos’ team captain and starting pitcher.

“I actually initially didn’t like softball,” Lizzy said. “But then I started pitching a little bit, and I really liked being able to control the rest of the game, which is kind of weird. I liked touching the ball every time, and then having it be my fault when things went wrong but also my [doing] when things went right.”

Lizzy began playing softball at the age of 8, making the decision to play competitively soon after. From the beginning, she was always drawn to the position of pitcher, despite its difficulty.

“Pitching is a lot of mental toughness,” Lizzy said. “Lots of times, if things are going badly for your team or for you, you have to pick yourself up and problem-solve in the middle of a game. There is never a perfect game; things go badly all the time. Being able to analyze what is going badly while playing and trying to fix it is probably the hardest part.”

Lizzy describes softball as being low-intensity, and then very high-intensity and high-pressure all at once. Because of the difficulty of batting and the relatively small amount of chances a player gets to hit, a large part of softball is failing. Lizzy has her own routine for accepting and getting over failure in a constructive way.

“Whenever I have a bad pitch or someone hits it or someone makes an error, I walk back behind the mound, and I look at the same tree that’s out way behind center field, take a deep breath and then turn back around,” Lizzy said. “I just think about resetting and visualizing what I want to have happen and forgetting whatever [mistake] just happened.”

Lizzy tries to pass down these lessons she has learned about letting go of mistakes to her teammates, particularly the younger players on the team.

“A lot of it is leading by example, always being the one to hustle and always being the one to pick other people up,” Lizzy said. “Being that person is harder than you’d think because sometimes it feels like they are always watching and looking up to you so you have to be very consistent and never show disappointment or anger.”