How Alexis DeBoer has made a name for herself with Washington softball

Long before her dad, Kalen DeBoer, arrived on the scene as one of the top coaches in college football, Washington’s Alexis DeBoer announced herself as a budding slugger on the softball scene.

She was a 6-year-old kindergartner playing youth softball in Carbondale, Illinois, where Kalen was the offensive coordinator at Southern Illinois, one of the many stops on his way to becoming head coach at Alabama.

On this spring day, while most of the other kids were playing in the dirt, Alexis stepped to the plate (the coaches pitched to the kids at that age) and smacked a ball over the outfield fence that ricocheted off her mother’s Honda Pilot.

“My first thought was, ‘OK, maybe we have something here,’ but the little turkey hit my car,” joked her mom, Nicole, emphasizing that it was one of those “tiny little kid fields.”

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Nonetheless, the following week when Alexis came to bat, the coaches all yelled to the rest of the kids, “Alexis is up. Back up and pay attention!”

Alexis is still belting home runs, but on a much larger field and stage. In her first season at Washington, she became the second freshman in program history to hit 20 home runs on her way to earning Big Ten Freshman of the Year honors. On Friday she hit her 21st home run of the season in her first NCAA tournament at-bat during a 6-3 loss to Mississippi State. The Huskies continue their journey through the double-elimination regional Saturday against Brown at 4:30 p.m. ET on ESPN+.

Asked about her banner season, Alexis said, “Honestly, it’s about my teammates and coaches and all their support in helping me transition to college and knowing they’re going to have my back no matter how I do on the field.”

Kalen offered a hearty laugh when told of his daughter’s response.

“That’s hilarious,” said Kalen, the antithesis of a sound bite machine behind the microphone. “But that’s what we talk about, that it’s easiest when you get interviewed to not just talk about yourself. You talk about your teammates, your coaches and how great they are.

“It’s never about you. It’s about the team.”

One of 10 finalists for the NFCA National Freshman of the Year Award, Alexis listened and learned well. She’s living out her dream of playing softball for coach Heather Tarr and the Huskies, a dream that was kindled long before her father came to Washington as football coach in 2022.

“That’s what has been cool about this whole thing. She’s paved her own way,” Kalen said. “I think maybe people at one point, especially when she first committed to Washington, were thinking it was more about me, but she’s proven this was completely about her, and that’s the way Coach Tarr had always approached it. She recruited Alexis for who she was as a softball player and a person, and it’s been great to see her do her thing.”

Alexis, who has primarily played first base this season, leads the Huskies in nearly every offensive category. Entering Friday, she was hitting .369 with 54 RBIs and had hit safely in 15 of her past 20 games. She also committed just one error in 51 games.

The entire DeBoer family is at the Lubbock Regional in Texas this weekend to watch Alexis play in her first NCAA tournament and the 31st consecutive appearance for Washington, a freshman-laden team that clawed its way into the NCAA field.

It’s tough to find a sport somebody in the DeBoer family hasn’t played. Alexis’ younger sister, Avery, who is in middle school, plays volleyball and participates in equestrian events. Kalen was a record-setting receiver in football at Sioux Falls and also played three years of baseball in college. Before diving full time into coaching, he briefly played in a semipro football league as well as some arena football, and he played a season of professional baseball in an independent league in Canton, Ohio.

But the most competitive member of the family, according to Alexis, is her mom.

“We all have fire. It just comes out in different ways,” said Nicole, who was a two-time South Dakota High School Gatorade Player of the Year in basketball. “But I would agree that I’m a little more spicy than the rest.”

Nicole, who turned down Division I offers to stay closer to home, still ranks among the top 25 scorers (1,187 career points) at Division II Augustana University in Sioux Falls.

“She was Steph Curry before Steph Curry,” Kalen said. “She’d come across half court, pull up from 3 and launch it from deep. I mean, she could shoot it from anywhere on the floor.”

Only once has Kalen dared to challenge Nicole on the basketball court. They played H-O-R-S-E soon after they met.

“I won and wasn’t going to play her again because I wanted to be unbeaten against her,” Kalen joked.

Nicole’s retort: “I’m still pissed, angry really. He beat me legitimately and we haven’t played since.”

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So, clearly, Alexis gets her competitive fire naturally. She said even board games with the family, especially Clue, can get testy.

“Usually, Kalen is making recruiting calls or working, but when he plays, he has to win,” Nicole said. “He’s so freakin’ competitive.”

Tarr, now in her 21st season as Washington’s coach, had a good idea what she was getting when Alexis committed to the Huskies as a junior in high school. She had been in athletic department meetings with Kalen, but more importantly, had done her homework on Alexis, who in turn had done her homework on Washington’s program.

While living in Fresno, California, when Kalen was Fresno State’s coach, Alexis attended a softball camp at Washington. She and Nicole even took in a Washington-Cal football game while they were in town.

There was another tie between the DeBoers and Tarr. Sara Pickering, a Husky Hall of Famer and one of the greatest players in Washington softball history, was an assistant coach at Alexis’ high school (Clovis North) in Fresno. Pickering and Tarr were teammates at Washington.

“Plus, it was Kalen DeBoer, so he’s going to breed something pretty special because of who he is as a person,” said Tarr, who guided Washington to the 2009 national championship and was an assistant coach on Team USA’s silver medal team at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. “But to be able to see it day in and day out, what a pro’s pro Alexis is and that there’s never any drama with her, is what you want as a coach.

“She keeps everything clean and easy, just a great teammate, and you can coach her hard and realistically, and it’s freeing to have someone like that on your team.”

Alexis’ pathway to freshman stardom at Washington hasn’t been easy. Given her father’s career path, she made seven moves across the country and played on 11 travel teams during that time.

“A lot of times, when Nicole and the girls could get moved when I’d get a new job, the better travel teams had already been picked and were full,” Kalen said. “It was like she was continually having to start over.”

But the constant during all that movement was that Alexis’ hitting coach was her father. From the time she could hold a bat, Kalen helped develop her swing. And when she came home one day from kindergarten with a flyer about youth softball, things got serious.

“I knew just enough to be dangerous,” joked Kalen, noting that Alexis was never anywhere long enough to get entrenched with one coach.

Alexis said she talks to her family nearly every day, and while she and her father try to keep the softball talk to a minimum, she said she’ll forever be indebted to him for always being there to hit her ground balls, take her to the batting cages and offer swing advice.

“I was so comfortable with him, and he always found the time,” Alexis said. “He never pushed to where it wasn’t fun. He taught. He didn’t let the little things slide, but he knew what my dreams were and did everything he could to make those dreams come true. Most of all, he was a great dad.”

That’s why Alexis told her father what she did when the Crimson Tide came after Kalen with a multimillion-dollar offer to be their next football coach.

Nicole said the only potential holdup in Kalen accepting the job was his wanting to make sure Alexis was OK with staying on the West Coast while the rest of the family headed across the country to Tuscaloosa.

But when he talked with Alexis, she made it easy for everyone.

“I’m right where I want to be, right where I’m supposed to be,” Alexis told her dad. “I know how important this is for you, what a great job it is. We can both have our own paths.”

“It was an opportunity he couldn’t turn down, the kind you’re fortunate if you get once in a lifetime,” Alexis said. “He loved it at Washington. We all did. But it was Alabama.”

Outside the DeBoer family there might have been speculation that Alexis would go with her family and join Alabama’s nationally ranked softball program, but she said that was never a consideration.

“I never want to leave this place,” said Alexis, who was already eyeing Washington when her dad was the offensive coordinator at Indiana in 2019. “There were no second thoughts because I trust Coach Tarr and this coaching staff and what we’re building here.”

Kalen and Nicole have been able to see several of Alexis’ games this season. Coincidentally, her first collegiate hit came against Alabama in the season opener in a tournament in Tucson, Arizona, and her first home run came two days later against the Crimson Tide. DeBoer was there for both games.

“It’s great to know that they’re there. We’ve always been a close family,” Alexis said. “And even when they’re not there, I feel their support all the way across the country.”

And, she said, she always can hear her father’s instruction — having the right tempo, loading properly, keeping a line-drive mentality, going to the opposite field — in the back of her head.

“I take a little bit of him with me to every game I play, even when he’s not there,” Alexis said.

For Kalen, being able to just be a dad watching his kid play in a postseason environment is about as fulfilling as it gets. While he won’t be making any crucial decisions, there are sure to be a few nervous moments for the whole family.

“There has been a lot of attention on her for different reasons, and she’s been solid and consistent in every way,” Kalen said. “She’s having fun. That’s what you want as a parent. She’s got some amazing friends there, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate those friends, even their parents, and the way the Washington family has taken care of her.

“She’s right where she’s supposed to be.”