The Hay playbook

[Link]Photo by Mizzou Athletics

Published on Show Me Mizzou April 24, 2025
Story by Joe Walljasper, BJ '92

When Abby Hay finally decided to switch from baseball to softball as a freshman at Rock Bridge High School in Columbia, she had some adjustments to make. She needed to learn how to hit riseballs, how to stay put on the basepaths until the pitcher released the ball and, perhaps most jarring, how to sing cheerful chants in the dugout.

"In baseball, it's more ruthless. You're trying to get under the other team's skin," Hay says. "The cheering is still not my favorite. I like to heckle sometimes. I have to control that a little bit."

Hay has otherwise adapted just fine. As a freshman first baseman at Mizzou in 2024, she hit .282, earned second-team All-Southeastern Conference honors and helped the Tigers come within a game of the College World Series.

That Hay became a Mizzou athlete seemed natural. Her parents are both former Tigers: baseball player John Hay, BS BA '92, and golfer Amy Smethers Hay, BS '95. That Abby wound up playing softball, though, was no sure thing.

Her dad's sport was her first love. She started by trying to keep up with her brother, Zack, who is four years older, and his friends in backyard games.

"I was the kid that would watch games and then go out in the yard and imitate the swings or the way they fielded ground balls to get the movements down," Abby says.

John helped coach Abby's baseball teams. She says he was always a little harder on her than the other players. He would tell her to shake off the occasional foul tip to the throat when she played catcher. Her parents never tried to steer her away from baseball.

"Who am I to tell her she can't do something?" Amy says. "Why would I be the one that says no and defines what she can't do?"

Abby decided to join some of her friends on the Rock Bridge softball team as a freshman. She continued to play baseball through her sophomore season before turning to softball full time for her final two years of high school. After Mizzou offered her a scholarship, the decision was easy.

"We've raised our kids at Mizzou football games and basketball games, and we're just Tigers through and through," Amy says. "The fact she wanted to stay here, it makes my heart swell."

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MIZZOU magazine Spring 2025

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