After The Whistle: Mardela’s Ava Twilley

MARDELA SPRINGS, Md. – Ava Twilley has burst on the scene in Bayside softball, winning back-to-back player of the year awards in the Bayside South. The top player on the Bayside Conference champions.

With all of her individual and team success, she continues to strive to be better. She says the motivation comes from wanting to be better than everyone else, following back-to-back state semifinal losses.

Ava grew up playing every sport you can think of, but it wasn’t until she was ten that she followed many of her friends and picked up a bat and a glove and fell in love with the sport.

“I would watch games on TV, I would want to practice more and more. So as I got older I decided that this is what I wanted to do, this is my sport. This is what I want to do.”

Ava began her career behind the plate as an aspiring catcher, but had to transition over to the rubber becoming a pitcher after a knee injury that was looked at as a setback at the time, but it turned out it was a blessing in disguise.

“I had to stop catching because of it. And I was like well let’s try pitching. It got me where I am now, and I’m very grateful for it.”

The results have followed Twilley and the Warriors, including the program’s first ever unbeaten regular season.

But the job’s not done.

“We’re all here at practice, we joke around with each other, but we know when it’s time to work hard and put our work in… And we’re all just really determined to come back next season bigger and better and we’re here to win this year.”

When she gets to college Ava wants to study in a STEM field, her goal is to earn a mechanical engineering degree and said designing softball equipment would be really cool.

As for in the classroom she excels there as well, telling me she holds a GPA well over 4.0