Photo by Addison Coffey
Before Kentucky’s softball season started I wondered what it might be like for senior second baseman Alex Martens when she played her final game with senior teammate Bailey Vick.
The two have been roommates and close friends since arriving at UK together and both have been starters their entire careers.
Of course, their collegiate careers are now over. The Southeastern Conference has banned practice, play or team gatherings — a huge blow to UK because it was off to an 20-4 start and ranked in the top 15.
“Honestly right now we are just focused on this season but we also know it is coming to an end,” Bailey said when asked about the eventual ending of her time with Vick. “We do think about our futures. Bailey has a great accounting job lined up here in Lexington to start working after the season.”
Pitcher Autumn Humes is another one of UK’s seniors. She transferred to Kentucky for her sophomore year and this was her third season with Martens. Pitcher Larissa Spellman has been Martens’ teammate for four years.
Humes plans to continue her education to be a physician’s assistant and Martens anticipated Spellman trying to get back closer to home in New Jersey after graduation.
Martens’ plan is to attend graduate school at Furman University.
“Those are dreams we have but they are not together and that is so sad to us and we don’t really know what to do with it so we are ignoring it (the end of the season),” Martens said before the season started.
That seemed like a perfect plan — at least before the coronavirus abruptly changed everything. Now the four seniors won’t get a chance to play another game together and definitely won’t have postseason play.
That’s especially bitter for Martens because she was having a record-setting season again. Martens set a school record by driving in 66 runs in 60 games in 2019 when she also hit .310 with 13 home runs, nine doubles, 22 runs scored and 17 walks.
But this year she was on a spectacular team. She already had knocked in 47 runs in 24 games bringing her career total to 181 —second best all-time at UK and just 21 behind the career mark that Abbey Cheek set last year. Martens seemed easily on track to break Cheek’s record since UK had 30 more regular-season games left along with postseason play before the SEC halted play.
Martens was hitting .507 — second on the team to Vick’s .571 — when the season was halted. Kentucky’s single season hitting mark of .442 was set in 2002 by Nikki Jones. The second best mark is .433 by current UK assistant coach Molly Johnson Belcher in 2009.
Martens knew going into the season that the graduation of Cheek, Katie Reed and Jenny Schaper — all four-year starters — placed a bigger role on and off the field on her. She was “humbled” not only by being named to the preseason all-SEC team but also being picked as a team captain.
“You never really can expect it (being named captain). Everyone in our organization — the coaches, the players, everyone who works with softball — gets a vote on this,” she said. “It’s really humbling knowing that people who voted for Katie and Jenny, and they were captains for three years and that’s unreal, saw the same things in me and Autumn (Humes) and that’s really special.
“That’s one of the most humbling things to wear this (C on the jersey). I didn’t even notice until Fan Day and I was doing my hair and noticed and said, ‘Oh my God.’ It’s just something special to lead a team of leaders.”
Martens was doing that and even more before her season came to a stunning end last week.
