To say Valerie Cagle has quickly become one of the most recognizable names in college softball would be an understatement.

Cagle is one full season into her collegiate career at Clemson. Yet she’s a budding superstar thanks to a breakout freshman season, one in which opponents already started showing an unusual amount of respect for the Tigers’ two-way standout.

Cagle was the young ace of the pitching staff a season ago as evidenced by the 216 ⅔ innings she hurled, second-most in the ACC. The hard-throwing right-hander started 32 games in the circle, finishing with an ACC-best 1.16 earned run average while ranking second in the league in wins (28) and strikeouts (267).

A left-handed hitter, her bat was just as formidable. Cagle, who doubles as an outfielder, led Clemson in average (.404), hits (63), RBIs (45), walks (27), extra-base hits (30) and slugging percentage (.821). Her 17 home runs led the ACC and ranked 24th nationally, making her a power threat that some opponents wanted to avoid regardless of the situation.

Last April, in Clemson’s series finale against North Carolina State, the Wolfpack gave Cagle the Barry Bonds treatment when she stepped to the plate with the bases loaded in the final inning of a game the Wolfpack led by two runs. Instead of pitching to her, N.C. State intentionally walked in a run, and Clemson ultimately rallied for a walk-off victory.

“You never know when the transition is made from travel ball and high school to Power Five softball, but we knew Valerie was a great talent with potential to be a five-tool player,” Clemson coach John Rittman said.

That win was part of a 44-8 season for Clemson, which won the ACC regular-season title in just the second season of the program’s existence and came a win shy of winning the conference tournament championship, too. Expectations may be even higher for Rittman’s program in Year 3, and Cagle is a big reason why.

After becoming the first player in ACC history to be named Player of the Year and Pitcher of the Year in the same season, Cagle was recently pegged as a preseason All-American by D1Softball. Cagle and sophomore outfielder McKenzie Clark each landed on the preseason All-ACC team for the Tigers, who were picked to finish second in the league – just nine total points behind Florida State – in the coaches’ preseason poll.

The real work for Cagle and her teammates starts Thursday when Clemson opens its season against Florida Gulf Coast in the FGCU Kickoff Classic in Fort Meyers, Florida.

“That stuff doesn’t mean anything until you get to postseason and all of those actual All-America awards come out,” Cagle said. “It’s really nice to be recognized for that, but that’s not the focus.”

Yet all of this almost never happened.

Stroke of luck

Clemson wasn’t on Cagle’s radar four years ago, and understandably so. The school announced the addition of a softball program in 2017, but the Tigers, needing to hire coaches and build facilities, were still a few years from playing their inaugural season.

Meanwhile, Cagle was a homeschooled student in Yorktown, Virginia, tearing up the travel ball circuit with the Hanover Hornets. And she had already decided where she was going to college with a verbal commitment to the University of Delaware.

Or so she thought.

Kyle Jamieson, now Clemson’s associate head coach, tried to recruit Cagle to Furman University when he was the head coach there for six seasons. Cagle wasn’t interested, but that connection paid off when Delaware made a coaching change following the 2018 season, resulting in Cagle reopening her recruitment.

“(Jamieson) knew about Valerie,” Rittman said. “And then when she made herself available again, we immediately got out, watched her and invited her to camp.”

Once Cagle got on campus for her camp evaluation, “I just loved it,” she said. Clemson had a highly respected coach in place in Rittman, the former Stanford and USA national team coach. The Tigers just needed some young talent to build around.

Cagle’s competitive nature also made Clemson’s startup program more of an enticement than a drawback in her recruitment. It all led to Cagle signing with the Tigers just in time to join the program for its first season in 2020.

“I couldn’t find something I didn’t like about the school, about the coaches, about the program and the vision they had,” Cagle said. “And being so competitive, being part of a first-year program, I just had the opportunity to set records, break records and all of that.”

Cagle started on that immediately.

In her first season with the Tigers, Cagle became the first Clemson player to ever reach base safely in a game. She recorded the program’s first save against Pittsburgh and hit the program’s first home run at McWhorter Stadium in the second game of a doubleheader against Western Carolina. She hit a walk-off home run to clinch Clemson’s first-ever ACC win against Virginia and pitched a complete game against Georgia in the program’s first-ever win over a ranked opponent.

She batted .376 with 10 home runs, the only freshman in the country to hit double-digit long balls during that 2020 season. And she did it during a coronavirus-shortened season that was limited to 27 games.

“I think one of the things that benefited her a lot was the COVID year,” Rittman said. “We played half the season. We got shut down. That experience that she gained was valuable, and I think it was a big reason she was so successful last year.”

Location, location, location

Cagle’s biggest improvement last season came in the circle, where she trimmed more than a full run off her earned run average from 2020 (2.19) despite making 19 more starts. Cagle said the best pitch in her arsenal is a drop ball that can reach the mid-70s in terms of miles per hour, but it became more effective when she improved her command, something she credited Jamieson, who doubles as Clemson’s pitching coach, for helping her sharpen.

“I was not very good at hitting spots until I got here because I could get away with throwing hard in high school,” Cagle said. “So when I got here is when I really had to work on that.”

That combined with the velocity and movement on her pitches is just part of what makes life difficult for opposing hitters when facing her, Rittman said.

“She changes speeds very well and keeps hitters off balance, and then she fields her position extremely well,” he said. “If you add all those up, those are probably the main reasons she’s so successful as a pitcher.”

Cagle’s production last season made her one of 10 finalists for the USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year award. She was also selected to compete for the USA under-18 Junior Women’s National Team late last year.

Heading into her third year in the program, Cagle knows there’s a target on the Tigers’ collective back given what they’ve accomplished the last couple of seasons, including the program’s first-ever NCAA regional appearance last spring. But Cagle isn’t one to back down from a challenge. 

She’s already gone through Clemson’s schedule this season and underlined which games she wants to pitch. She said she’s informed Rittman of her list.

“It’s a lot,” Cagle said. “I know I’m not going to throw all of those games, but every big game, I want that game.”

Rittman is just glad he has the option of giving the ball to a player who’s become the face of his young program in a hurry.

“Luckily she chose Clemson and really wanted to be a pioneer for our program,” Rittman said. “That’s kind of how it all played out.”

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