{"id":22381,"date":"2025-05-14T01:55:59","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T07:55:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=22381"},"modified":"2025-05-13T22:07:25","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T04:07:25","slug":"makinzie-nelsons-last-home-run","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2025\/05\/14\/makinzie-nelsons-last-home-run\/","title":{"rendered":"Makinzie Nelson\u2019s Last \u2018Home\u2019 Run"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wood River Softball Star Rewrites The Record Books With Her Father At Her Side<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

BY Mark Dee<\/em><\/p>\n

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Members of Wood River Wolverines girls softball team gather to cheer on a team member. Photo Credit: Nicky Elsbree<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Looking back, some of Matt Nelson\u2019s favorite moments coaching his four daughters might have been his most miserable. He calls them \u201cshins and chins\u201d practices, set up behind the plate as low fastballs pelted his legs and spiked curves leapt from the infield dirt up into his face. Nelson raised his girls in the game. They could all hit and pitch and field their positions. They were all competitors\u2014on the diamond, in the yard, over a deck of cards in the living room. One-on-one, though, the Wood River High School head coach hoped to impart a bit more\u2014a sense of how to approach the game, and through it, their lives after.
\nWith his second daughter, Wood River High School star senior Makinzie Nelson, he can pinpoint the moment he saw those lessons take: First inning, versus Sugar-Salem, on April 8. The Wolverines had limped to a 1-8 start, still warming up as their fields greened in Hailey. Nelson, a three-year varsity player already committed to play at Division I Montana next year, had been solid. With her first at bat, her season turned spectacular. Nelson hit two home runs in the game, leading the Wolverines to their second win of the year. And she didn\u2019t stop, homering in each of the next eight games.
\n\u201cEvery ball she hit just exploded off her bat,\u201d Matt Nelson said. \u201cI was like, \u2018Holy Cow.\u2019 I mean, the kid\u2019s locked in. Here we go.\u201d
\nIn softball, where long seasons are defined by routine and superstition, the best thing a player can hear is nothing at all. Just like no one mentions a pitcher is nearing a no hitter, no one speaks about a hitter on a streak. And for much of this season, Makinzie Nelson\u2019s teammates\u2014and her father\u2014didn\u2019t say anything about what she was doing.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s like \u2018Fight Club,\u2019 you know?\u201d Matt Nelson said. \u201cYou don\u2019t talk about Fight Club.\u201d
\nShe didn\u2019t think about it, either\u2014avoiding stats and doing everything she could to quiet her mind. At home, she\u2019d draw or paint; in the dugout, she\u2019d think about her dog; at the plate, she\u2019d repeat the simple mantra she\u2019d coined for herself and shrink the world to the grapefruit-sized yellow streak beaming in her direction. \u201cSee ball, hit ball,\u201d she\u2019d say, and more often than not, she did.
\nOn Thursday, Burley beat Wood River to end the Wolverines\u2019 season one game shy of a state tournament berth. With it ended one of the most dominant statistical seasons ever posted by a Wood River High School athlete. Over 28 games, Makinzie Nelson batted .709, in the top 100 nationally, per stats recorded by the high school athletics clearinghouse MaxPreps. She drove in 58 runs and slugged 1.663, both top 50 in the country. And she hit 19 home runs, top 25, including her nine-game streak, a run Wood River Athletic Director Kevin Stilling called \u201csimply outstanding.\u201d
\nKevin Stilling has seen school records set before. He thinks of Johnny Radford reaching the mark for points in basketball, or Alec Nordsieck and Cade Schoot setting back-to-back passing records on the football field. Tanner Dredge\u2019s 39-goal soccer season comes to mind. So do the All-State girls basketball runs of KT Martinez and Haylee Thompson.
\n\u201cI am not, however, aware of athletes whose numbers ranked nationally the way Makinzie\u2019s have,\u201d he said. \u201cCredit to her and all the work she has put in to make this record-setting season possible.\u201d
\nFor Makinzie Nelson, it was years coming. As a child, she learned softball with the girls seniors on this Wood River team. Then, her skill pulled her away. She sought more and better competition, playing on travel teams in Boise or Idaho Falls. Softball hasn\u2019t always been a strong sport in the valley, she said, where the long winter means seasons invariably start with indoor practices and road games. She played where she could, and lost the connection to teammates close to home.
\nAs a rare freshman on varsity, Nelson was thrown straight into the fire, starting the season as the team\u2019s number one pitcher.
\n\u201cI was a scared little teenage girl,\u201d she remembers. \u201cI didn\u2019t know any of the girls I was playing with. They were all older than me.\u201d Through the seasons, she got stronger. Familiar faces joined the team\u2014girls she\u2019d played with as a nine year old. \u201cThat connection came right back.\u201d
\n\u201cThe more comfortable I got, the more loose I got,\u201d she says. She grew more, was more confident off the field, and it translated in her play. \u201cAnd this year, something hit. I felt like I could own any pitcher that came against me. On the mound, (I could) pitch to any batter that was hitting against me. Something just clicked this year\u2026It\u2019s probably the best year of my life.\u201d
\nIt didn\u2019t start that way. In late December, a teammate died suddenly. Before every game this year, her friends hung her jersey on a ski pole and raised it in the dugout like a banner. Her name, Matt said, was Faith. His voice cracks thinking of her. This season, he wanted to help his team remember her, too. So they\u2019d hang the jersey, and their coach would remind them that \u201cfaith is the stuff you can\u2019t see anyway.\u201d
\n\u201cYou gotta believe it,\u201d he said before the Burley game. Honoring their friend has \u201cbeen good for the healing process for those kid,\u201d he said. \u201cThe bond is hitting right now.\u201d
\nAs for coaching his daughter, Matt said the hard part is over. She knows how to play. She loves the game. This year was about fine tuning her mindset, and making sure she savors her last high school season\u2014the kind of a coaching parents do every day.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s like having a violin,\u201d he said. \u201cYou wind that thing too tight, it\u2019s going to snap. So we always try to keep her enjoying the game. As long as she\u2019s enjoying it, I\u2019m all for letting her do whatever she wants. You play your game, play it hard, play it the best you can, and that\u2019s all you can do. When you don\u2019t enjoy it anymore, put your spikes in the fire pit and let them cook, just end it right there.\u201d
\nThat\u2019s the lesson he saw sprout in the first at bat against Sugar Salem, and blossom in the games since.
\n\u201cThere are so many fundamental things that he has taught me, but this year I\u2019ve been a pretty mental player, just \u2018because, you know, the whole world feels like it\u2019s been on my shoulders,\u201d she said. \u201cBut he pulls me off to the side and he, he always just tells me, \u2018Do what you can control. Do the best that you can be. Nothing else matters, just perform to your best. And if your best is, you know, hitting maybe one line drive and then getting out the rest of the time, I\u2019ll still love you. If it\u2019s, you know, striking out 10 girls, and then hitting it out every time, I\u2019ll still love you. Just know that whatever you do is, you know, just do it to, to the best of your ability and I\u2019ll stand by you for the rest of my life.\u2019\u201d
\nAfter the Burley loss, Matt Nelson gathered his girls on the field. Some, he\u2019d coached half their lives. It was the last time he\u2019d coach Makinzie in competition.
\n\u201cI just let the girls know how proud I was of them and their effort they gave me this year after all the tragedy and record-breaking events that happened,\u201d he said later. \u201cI just told them how proud I was of the resilience and unwavering ability to keep a smile on their faces.\u201d He told his seniors that their lives are \u201cgonna be full of dream-makers, and heartbreakers, and that this little game that doesn\u2019t mean anything\u201d can teach you everything, in a world where you need mental toughness, determination, teamwork and faith. He reminded them that in uniform or out, they\u2019re part of \u201ca group of people that would do anything for you for the rest of your life.\u201d
\nBefore the loss, Nelson told me that just thinking of Makinzie on the diamond made him smile.
\n\u201cI\u2019m gonna be there one day as an old guy sitting on my front porch, watching the sunset,\u201d he said, \u201cand my wife and I will reminisce about the kind of year she had this year, and just how amazing it was to watch.\u201d
\nMaybe Makinzie and her sisters will be there too. And she\u2019ll share that her favorite memory from her high school career isn\u2019t really about her at all. In it, they\u2019re in Buhl. She\u2019s standing on second base. Her sister Paityn, now a sophomore, is at bat, her father\u2014her coach\u2014is in the dugout. She\u2019s looking to him for a sign. Instead, she hears the resonant thwack of Paityn\u2019s bat, the unmistakable sound of a ball on its way over the wall. She looks at Matt before she starts to run, and sees that he\u2019s near tears. When she pictures it now, she sees the rest through her father\u2019s eyes: His daughters jogging the base paths, smiling on their slow way home.<\/p>\n

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Wood River Softball Star Rewrites The Record Books With Her Father At Her Side BY Mark Dee Looking back, some of Matt Nelson\u2019s favorite moments coaching his four daughters might have been his most miserable. He calls them \u201cshins and chins\u201d practices, set up behind the plate as low fastballs pelted his legs and spiked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":479,"featured_media":22383,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[72,18,39],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-22381","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-community","8":"category-news","9":"category-sport"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22381","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/479"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22381"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22381\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22384,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22381\/revisions\/22384"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22381"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22381"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22381"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}