Madison Wilson Honoring Late Father With Huge Season For UMBC Softball

The UMBC softball team won its fourth straight America East title, winning three games in three days to win the conference tournament and earn a bid to the NCAA Tournament.

Senior Madison Wilson was named Most Outstanding Player of the America East tournament, getting on base seven times in the three games. She hit two home runs, one in a 7-0 win against UMass Lowell on May 11 and another in a 1-0 win against UAlbany on May 12. She walked twice in the Retrievers’ 9-3, conference-clinching win on May 13.

It comes as Wilson navigates the toughest period of her life. Her father, Donald, passed away from colorectal neuroendocrine cancer at the age of 62 in August 2022 after being diagnosed on Christmas Eve 2021. He was working as a carpenter when back pain led him to getting checked out.

Donald passed away just months later, but not before having a chance to watch Madison contribute to an America East title squad in the spring of 2022.

“It was a challenging time, but talking with my dad, he wanted me to live my life,” Wilson said on Glenn Clark Radio May 16. “He wanted me to go through not with any doubts that I didn’t do what was what I wanted. He wanted me to follow my dreams, and he wanted to watch me play softball. That’s exactly what I did.”

Wilson called the 2022 season “extremely hard,” giving her pause about whether to play softball moving forward.

“I had a conversation with him and he told me to do what made me happy,” Wilson said. “That was something that was hard for me to figure out because I didn’t know what was making me happy at that moment. With a lot of therapy and talking with friends and family, I made the decision just to come back and see how it was. … I made a vow to myself that I would just have fun this season and be able to do it in his honor.”

Wilson has certainly done that. The 6-foot designated player has hit .337/.396/.614 with eight home runs in 37 games, one year after hitting just .205/.295/.359 during a season in which she was admittedly not herself. Now, she is hitting home runs like this one in the America East tournament:

Wilson makes it a point to pray to her father before every at-bat.

“The times that I’ve done that are the times that I’ve gone and hit home runs,” Wilson said. “It just shows me that he’s still there and he’s still watching over me to this day. It’s a feeling you can’t even describe knowing that I still have this part of my dad no matter what, and I always carry him with me everywhere that I go. I continue to embrace what he always did, which was to make people happy and make people smile. That’s what I intend to do for the rest of my life and carry on his legacy.”

Wilson, a native of Abingdon and graduate of Garrison Forest, began her college career at Appalachian State but has played for UMBC since 2021. The Retrievers have gone 82-40 the past three seasons, including 26-15 this year. The Retrievers enter the NCAA Tournament riding high, having won nine of their last 11 contests.

UMBC is one of 64 teams to make the NCAA Tournament. The field splits into 16 regions, with four teams in each region. Every foursome will compete in a double-elimination competition, with one team advancing to super regionals. Two-time defending champ Oklahoma is the No. 1 overall seed.

UMBC will compete in the Stillwater region along with No. 6 seed Oklahoma State, Nebraska and Wichita State. The Retrievers are still looking for their first NCAA Tournament win of their America East championship run, having lost to Oklahoma and Notre Dame in 2019, Arizona and Villanova in 2021 and Duke and Georgia in 2022.

Wilson remembers the 2021 tournament well given that she felt a little overwhelmed by it all. She’s more prepared now.

“When I was in Arizona, that was such an eye-opener — such a big, huge stadium with so many fans screaming around you. It’s so surreal,” Wilson said. “This is what it’s like. This is huge. From our little softball field where we have our parents come out and our friends, being in something like that is very daunting. But now going through it three times, it doesn’t feel as daunting.”

UMBC will face Oklahoma State at 4 p.m. on May 19. The Cowboys have advanced to each of the past three Women’s College World Series. This year, they’re 41-14 overall. They’re hitting .324/.413/.497 as a team. They’ve struck out 391 hitters in 367.2 innings.

It’s a tall task for the Retrievers, but they’re ready.

“We are not backing down,” Wilson said. “That’s something that we said once we won our championship — we’re going in there to win. We’re not going to have the experience like everyone else does. We are going in there to win because we know that we can and we have the ability to. It’s just us producing.”

For more from Wilson, listen to the full interview here: