By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Foundation

Taylor Ellis first caught Glenn Moore's eye when she was playing for Midway at the 2011 Little League Softball World Series in Portland, Ore.

"She's at shortstop and went out about halfway and took the ball from the leftfielder and throws a strike to home plate," Moore said. "And ESPN kept replaying it over and over. I pick up the phone and called (associate head coach Mark Lumley) and say, 'Hey, are you watching the Little League World Series?' He said he was, and I said, 'I want this Ellis kid in green and gold one day.'''

Ellis was 12 years old at the time. "One day" is now. The talented shortstop is one of three freshmen in the starting lineup for the 13th-ranked Baylor Lady Bears (32-6, 5-1), who host Iowa State (15-24, 0-6) in a three-game series this weekend at Getterman Stadium.

"Growing up, it was always a dream of mine to come to Baylor," said Ellis, who is hitting .258 with a combined 28 starts at shortstop, second base and catcher. "I would come to the games with my dad and watch awesome players like Brette Regan and Chelsi Lake, people that I really idolized. When I was younger, coming here was sort of like an out-of-reach type of thing. As I got older, it became more realistic. And now that I'm here, it's a dream come true. Every day I put on the Baylor green is a special day."

With Ellis joining pitcher/outfielder Shelby "Goose" McGlaun from Humble, Texas, and outfielders Maddison Kettler from West and Madi O'Neal from Huffman, Moore said he knew all along "that this would be one of the best incoming freshman classes we've ever had here."

The top-rated recruit in the state, McGlaun has lived up to the hype with a .293 batting average, 27 RBI and a team-best eight home runs and is 5-2 with a 1.81 ERA in the circle. Kettler has started all but one game and is hitting .357 with 10 stolen bases and 12 RBI, while O'Neal has been used primarily as a pinch-runner and is hitting .333 in limited plate appearances.

"Especially having them as friends as well," McGlaun said, "when we struggle, we can all relate to each other, because we're all still learning the ropes."

The learning curve has not been a big one, though. Particularly for the three freshmen in the starting lineup, it's been a fairly seamless transition.

"This team has great athletes, so I definitely had to work hard coming in," said Kettler, who has been a rock as the everyday leftfielder. "I didn't expect to step right on the field. But, when the opportunity was there, I took it."

That was the case with Ellis, too. An infielder basically her whole life, she was expected to come in and back up returning starter Caitlin Charlton at shortstop. But, going into her last summer of travel ball with Texas Glory, she was hit with a strange request.

Moore asked her, "What do you think about catching?"

"It was kind of a shocking moment for me. I was like, 'What?''' said Ellis, who was named the Waco Tribune-Herald Super Centex Player of the Year in 2015, when she hit .531 with 17 stolen bases and 39 RBI. "But, I'm the type of player that you can pretty much stick me where you want and I'm going to do my best and give my all for the team, regardless of what it looks like."

After losing a catching prospect late in the recruiting process, Moore was forced to make a decision on whether to find another one or "try to make one out of somebody like Taylor."

Ellis always felt like she had the arm for it, but she went to school over the summer scouring over training video tapes and doing what she could to improve at the position. "And I've been continuing that. I'm just excited to contribute to the team any way I can, so that's been a blessing."

With Charlton dealing with injuries, Ellis started the season at short and is back there now after splitting some time with Sydney Christensen at catcher and filling in at second base when Ari Hawkins was sick.

"At the beginning of the year, you see people in the stands that you know," Ellis said. "Everybody knows you, everybody's expecting you to be something great. And I think from the start, I was pressing a little bit, wanting to be like the hometown hero. . . . My parents have helped me a lot with that. When I started out pressing, struggling a little bit, my parents said, 'Hey, even if you never step foot on that field, we're proud of you.'''

It was a different kind of pressure for McGlaun, who had to deal with the hype of being the top-rated recruit in the state. "So when I failed at first, it was kind of a deflating thing, especially in my mind," she said.

"I think early on, opposing coaches would look at her batting average and think, 'We can pitch to this girl,''' Moore said. "But, she's become the hitter that we thought she could be. She's a scary hitter."

Last week, McGlaun hit homers in three consecutive games. In a three-game sweep of Texas Tech, McGlaun hit .429 and combined with Kettler and Ellis to account for nearly half of the Lady Bears' hits (13 of 30) and RBI (five of 11).

"I just had to get to that point where (I realized) bad things are going to happen ÃÆ' ¢Ãƒ ¢' ¬" I'm going to strike out, I'm going to pop out," she said. "It's just how I respond to those things and how I come back and make adjustments. I think it definitely helped me in the beginning, failing a little bit, just because I had to grow as a player as well as a person to get through it."

Originally recruited as an outfielder and hitter, McGlaun is now throwing 70 mph from the circle and is developing an off-speed, "which is the No. 1 pitch you need after you throw hard," Moore said.

"The fact that she can throw as hard as a freshman as Whitney Canion was throwing her senior year is pretty impressive, because Whitney could bring it," Moore said.

Like Ellis, her teammate on the Texas Glory select team, Kettler dreamed of playing for the Lady Bears at an early age.

"Of course, I was looking at other places," said Kettler, who was the Super Centex Player of the Year last season when she hit .645 with five homers, 49 RBI and 22 stolen bases and led West to its first state championship. "But, I was just waiting for Baylor. And when that offer was there, I took it."

While she played shortstop for her high school team, Kettler was an outfielder in select ball and is "very comfortable" in left field. "It's kind of my domain, I guess you would say."

The freshman trio have a "comfort zone," knowing that if one of them is off, the other players will pick up the slack.

"Met and Kett have history together," Ellis said. "We played together, so we're really comfortable with each other, we're roommates. Really, that's the best thing I could have asked for, coming in. . . . When we're struggling, I can say, 'Hey, you're doing this.' And she counter and say, 'Well, you're doing this.' So really, we kind of make each other better."