After the Whistle: The Twilley Sisters

MARDELA SPRINGS, Md. – In the midst of another great season for the Warriors, a pair of players on the Mardela softball team share a unique bond.

“She’s always pushed me to my limits and she’s always been the one on the field to be like, ‘Hey, get your head in the game,'” Ella Twilley said of her sister Ava.

Ella Twilley is a freshman for Mardela softball. Her sister Ava, a junior on the team, said that iron sharpens iron when the two of them are on the same squad.

“We get a little competitive sometimes. So the competitiveness definitely just comes out in us, and it’s just fun to challenge each other and be able to like, not butt heads, but just make ourselves the best we can be,” Ava said.

As the elder Twilley sister, Ava said she tries to share with Ella some of the lessons she’s learned throughout her own high school career: “If you’re not mentally there in the game, it doesn’t matter if you’re physically there or not there, it could break you…Definitely always [having] a positive mindset is a lot of what I really get on her about.”

With Ava being a two-time player of the year in the Bayside South, Ella takes these lessons to heart, saying, “I’ve definitely taken a lot of that in because I feel like the more I let her talk to me and the more I listen to it, the better I get on the field and the more confidence I have on the field.”

Ella thinks that she’s already proving herself as a freshman, but does she feel any pressure to reach the high bar set by her sister? “Nah. I mean, there’s some points where it’s like, she gets the attention. I’ll just be, like, floating here, but I get the attention right back,” Ella chuckled.

“Just our competitiveness,” Ava laughed back.

Mardela softball Head Coach Kory Shiles wondered why the duo is so humble, joking, “You didn’t say ‘We both hit bombs’?”

To that, Ella seemed to think their play speaks for itself: “I mean, they already know that.”