Kaitlyn Pallozzi pitches No. 1 Farmington Hills Mercy softball to 5th straight CHSL title
Alabama signee Kaitlyn Pallozzi struck out 16 batters, as Farmington Hills Mercy beat Dearborn Divine Child 5-0 in Monday's championship.
Just like that, Kaitlyn Pallozzi's softball career in the Catholic League is over.
No. 1-ranked Farmington Hills Mercy beat Dearborn Divine Child 5-0 in the Bishop tournament championship May 19 at Eastern Michigan University's Varsity Field.
The senior struck out 16 batters, helping the Marlins (25-2) claim their fifth consecutive conference crown, with the past four coming with her in the circle.
Entering the spring, Perfect Game Softball ranked the Alabama signee as the No. 4 2025 pitcher in the country.
Now, she exits the regular season as a four-time conference champion, the CHSL Athlete of the Year and one of the greatest pitchers to play in the league.
Her CHSL legacy will likely be cemented with an induction into the conference's Hall of Fame whenever her playing days finish. In the immediate future, however, she's trying to cement her legacy in the playoffs.
A Division 1 state championship is the only thing that has eluded Pallozzi since becoming the Marlins' starter four years ago. And worse yet? Each playoff loss she has suffered has come against the eventual state champions.
That was Allen Park and Michigan Ms. Softball winner Madilynn Ramey beating Pallozzi in the 2022 quarterfinal at Wayne State University before the Jaguars beat Macomb Dakota in the state final.
That was losing to Hartland 3-0 in the 2023 regional championship, arguably one of the toughest regional tournaments ever played in Michigan High School Athletic Association history.
The pitchers in those three games alone included Pallozzi, who's headed to the SEC, South Lyon's Ava Bradshaw, the 2022 Michigan Gatorade Player of the Year, who's now at ACC power Duke, Toledo commit Lyla Turmell from Walled Lake Northern and Hartland's Kylie Swierkos, who's now pitching at Grand Valley State. And that's not including any of the field players who were Division I prospects during that exciting Saturday at White Lake Lakeland.
Hartland was the underdog, yet it defeated Brownstown Woodhaven to win it all the following week.
And, of course, last year's postseason exit will likely go down as the most heartbreaking of Pallozzi's career. In a battle of No. 1 vs. No. 2 in the state semifinal, undefeated Hudsonville got the best of the Marlins, winning via the mercy rule, 10-0, and advancing to beat Lake Orion in the championship later that weekend.
Pallozzi had been battling an injury entering that matchup, and Hudsonville took advantage of it by plating seven runs in a game-deciding fifth inning. Mercy was right there at Michigan State. It came so close to finally winning it all.
"It's been really tough, looking back," Pallozzi said after receiving All-CHSL honors following her one-hitter performance vs. Divine Child. "But I know this year, our team is ready to play, ready to go into the postseason and come out strong. I think it'll be a good year."
The good news? Mercy doesn't look back at those three losses with a sour taste. Coach Corey Burras considers those results part of the process, part of learning to be a champion and playing to the best of their abilities.
"I don't look at prior seasons as being a failure because every day we're getting better," said Burras, whose daughter, Kat, a freshman playing at Sacred Heart University, was Pallozzi's catcher during that run. "Even leading up to the game today, we're just trying to get better, getting everything together so we can start our momentum toward a state championship run. All of this is just building those blocks toward a successful state tournament run."
The Marlins should get through their district against crosstown rivals Farmington and North Farmington.
But they're expected to run into the Kensington Lakes Activities Association champion in the regional rounds, which will be no easy feat. Any of the KLAA's pitchers can make a game out of it, no matter how elite Pallozzi and Mercy have been playing. Whether that's Northville's Mary Gugala or Salem's Shannon McAuliffe, or if it means facing Livonia Stevenson's Allie Cramer in a rematch of Mercy's 1-0 close-call vs. the Spartans, the Livonia City champions, earlier this spring.
And getting out of the quarterfinal afterward won't be easy either.
A target will be on Mercy's back, which should be the case with the No. 1 team in Michigan. But the Marlins will have to power through adversity if they want to help Pallozzi close out her career with a state championship.
"We really are just going one game at a time and focusing on the next day and the next practice, working as hard as we can on the next thing," the senior said. "Knowing we have so much pressure on our backs, coming in ranked No. 1, that's a lot. But just realizing that this is just a game, and you're playing it for fun, is what has really helped us get through this."
The postseason begins next week, and the clock on Pallozzi's prep career is quickly ticking down. She's already one of the greatest players in the state's history. Finally winning a state title could ensure she finishes as the greatest in the modern era of the sport. It's the only trophy she hasn't hoisted over her storybook four years in Farmington Hills, and she has less than a month left to reach that goal.