Go to Abby Turnpaugh’s room, and you see it.
In the middle of all the pictures and cards – including a photo of her dog and the yellow street sign with the turtle silhouette – is the whiteboard with the list of Notre Dame career pitching records she wants to break.
Turnpaugh’s a senior, and she’s eclipsed one and is close to another. Her 617 strikeouts are 29 more than Jessica Birkenhauer’s 588 – a standard that lasted since 1999 – and her 51 career wins (she’s 51-24 in four-plus seasons) are just four away from the 55 Haylee Smith set from 2013-15.
So far this season, Turnpaugh is 7-2 with 96 strikeouts and a 1.72 earned run average. She can hit a little, too: her .472 batting average and 11 runs batted in leads the Pandas.
Turnpaugh has also thrown seven perfect games in high school; the latest was a 10-0 five-inning win over Holy Cross on April 10 in which she struck out 10. She remembers her first one, a 2-0 win May 16, 2022 at Bracken County that included 15 strikeouts.
“I know I threw a lot of curveballs, and I didn’t realize it was a perfect game until the sixth inning,” she said.
Notre Dame coach Chris Schreiber remembers Turnpaugh’s first appearance as an eighth-grader – April 17, 2021, an 8-3 win over Ryle in which she struck out eight, walked two and allowed just one earned run.
“Our starting pitcher at that point (Cam Steinbrunner) had a knee injury,” Schreiber said. “Abby came in and showed a lot of maturity that game against Ryle.”
Notre Dame sophomore Addi Zinser started catching for Turnpaugh some three years ago.
“I was really shocked,” Zinser said. “I hadn’t seen pitching that fast before, and I was shocked at how fast and accurate it was.”
Turnpaugh been throwing something spherical since T-ball at age three.
“So that was a baseball, technically,” she said. “But once I turned 7, I could start playing on an actual softball team. So I’ve been playing the sport forever, basically.”
Turnpaugh’s mom, Suzy Turnpaugh, played high school slow-pitch softball in West Virginia.
“My mom was a pitcher, so my parents had me (in) pitching lessons as soon as pitching was a thing, because at first it was machine-pitch only,” she said.
Schreiber said the one of the first things you notice is Turnpaugh’s unflappability in the pitcher’s circle, a trait she learned as part of the Pandas’ state champion volleyball team in 2022.
“I’m used to the high pressure situations, and I know when you’re younger, it’s not as a big of a deal,” Turnpaugh said. “But I think I just got accustomed to competing (in) close games and stuff. I used to be a goalie in soccer; that was a lot of pressure, too.”
At 5 feet, 6 inches, Turnpaugh is not as tall as Texas 6-footer Teagan Kavan, one of her softball role models. (There’s also a quote from Kavan on her whiteboard: “Confidence is not the absence of self-doubt, it is choosing to resist it.”)
Buster Combs, who runs a softball facility in St. Leon, Indiana, has worked with Turnpaugh for seven or eight years. He said her core strength through her back, abdomen and pelvic floor allows her to generate speed.
“That’s what pitchers need to get explosive off the pitching rubber … which gives her great arm speed and arm whip, which is basically what it boils down to for speed,” Combs said.
Turnpaugh said strong fundamentals and Pilates classes have helped her.
“I’m trying to throw the hardest I can for my height because I’m not very tall,” she said. “ … I’ve learned how to spin it and I can get high-level hitters out even though I don’t throw super hard.”
Turnpaugh’s college career is next – she signed with Manhattan University, an NCAA Division I school in Riverdale, New York.
But there’s one high school goal – winning Notre Dame’s seventh Ninth Region title. It would be the first since 2017 and would end Highlands’ three-year reign.
“I hope that the younger girls are learning from me, and they’ll look back and think I said something or I helped them out,” Turnpaugh said. “… I just want to be remembered as a good role model, a good teammate.”