After 25-year-old Jordyn Walter arrived as the new Saint Mary’s head softball coach last August, it didn’t take long for her to get on the same page as her team. The Belles entered the spring of 2025 extremely young, presenting a roster comprised of 10 freshmen, eight sophomores and only four upperclassmen.
Given that so many of her players had minimally or never played for another college coach, Walter was able to build a connection with her squad more naturally than most first-year coaches would.
“The girls technically aren’t mine, but they made me feel like they were mine,” Walter said. “And if we were in a world where they reached out and said, ‘Hey, I’m interested in Saint Mary’s,’ I would have recruited them. They are amazing people, amazing personalities, amazing athletes.”
Walter also credits the Belles’ previous regime, which consisted of twin co-head coaches Cassie and Jamie Young, as integral to the cohesiveness of her new program.
“These returners, the culture, I can see it with them,” Walter noted. “The positivity, the drive, the willingness to just be hardworking, the hard work is just untapped, and I applaud the previous coaches before me for finding people that are like that.”
In Walter’s first season, the Belles went 10-20, matching their overall win total from 2024 and going 4-12 in Michigan Intercollegiate Athletic Association (MIAA) play. They picked up steam during the second week of March, answering a 0-5 start by rattling off five consecutive victories down in Florida. Though they’d run into an eight-game skid in April, the Belles finished strong, splitting each of their last two doubleheaders and walking off Albion in an extra-inning season finale.
Though defense emerged as their primary strength in 2025, the Belles received encouraging offensive contributions from a couple of their freshmen. Infielder and outfielder Talia Jorgensen became the program’s first All-MIAA First Team selection since 2018, leading Saint Mary’s in batting average (.426), on-base percentage (.438), slugging percentage (.585), extra-base hits (10) and stolen bases (nine). She tied infield classmate Hunter St. Peter for the Belles’ high RBI watermark with 16, as St. Peter hit .271 and paced the team with eight doubles.
“Talia, in particular, she saw that, and she took initiative — she came in with that aggressiveness,” Walter described. “That can-do attitude, that will-do attitude is really going to be a big program-changer for us, and I think Talia embraced that early.”
A couple of Belles returners pieced together solid seasons as well. Junior outfielder Leah Zimmerman hit .306 with 11 RBI, while sophomore infielder Laura Heim hit a home run and totaled 12 RBI.
The Belles struggled more in the circle, pitching to a 6.57 team-earned run average. Junior Sam Mikitka (7.03 ERA) and freshman Faith Dean (5.97 ERA) led Saint Mary’s in innings pitched, combining for more than 140.
The good news for the Belles is that all four of their pitchers who saw the field in 2025 are set to return next spring. Additionally, Walter mentioned that she is planning to bring on a new coach specializing in pitchers and catchers, allowing for increased development of her arsenal.
In Walter’s opinion, for her team to take the next step, it must play with more grit and be willing to get down and dirty in search of the win. She saw signs of that development when the Belles played an April 16 doubleheader against Trine, the No. 7 team in the country at the time. At one point in the second game, Saint Mary’s overcame a 5-0 deficit and led 6-5 against a Trine team that went on to go 36-5 and did not lose a conference game all year.
“I was very pleased with their drive, very pleased with their grit, and I can see blips [that] they want to force things to happen. They want to win these things,” Walter said about her players. “At the end of game two, I was just smiling. I don’t like to lose, don’t get me wrong, but I was smiling because I know what we have. I went home, and I told my husband, I’m like, ‘You know, this freshman class, they will beat Trine one day.’”
Walter’s belief in Saint Mary’s softball extends beyond whatever matchups against Trine the future might hold. She and the Belles, who haven’t finished a season with more than 15 wins since 2018, recognize that the potential for greatness is right in front of them.
“This is a school that can win. This is a program that has what it takes to win. It just needs that extra push,” Walter said. “Honestly, all I can see in our future is the wins that we’re going to have because the culture that we have is here, we’ve just got to tweak it.”
