Softball Player of the Year: Carlmont’s Ashley Trierweiler

Along the way, she also recorded hitting streaks of 22 games (between her freshman and sophomore seasons) and a career-high 27 games (between her junior and senior seasons) en route to totaling 199 career knocks. Not that the hit total is all that important to her.

“As long as I’m putting in the best work I can, the number doesn’t really matter,” said Trierweiler, talking about academic performance in the classroom, but likening it to her outlook on softball performance. “Cause I know if I’m doing my best work, the number is going to reflect that no matter what.”

Trierweiler was named the Peninsula Athletic League Bay Division Player of the Year after hitting for .568 and ranking third in the Central Coast Section with 50 hits. And she has now been named the Daily Journal Softball Player of the Year.

While Carlmont softball was a powerhouse long before Trierweiler arrived on the campus in her hometown Belmont — the Scots have missed the tournament just once since its inception in 1977 — the left-handed hitting on-base machine was essential to sustaining the legacy.

Even in 2016 as a freshman, she proved an integral part of former head coach Jim Liggett’s farewell season, batting .471 with 48 hits, reaching base in every one of the 27 games in which she played, while hitting safely in 26 of them. All this, she did with one simple hitting philosophy in mind.

“I’ve got to make contact and I’ve got to run fast,” Trierweiler said. “That’s kind of what went through my head.”

Her hitting excellence is something of a natural talent. Trierweiler is a second-generation PAL standout. Her mother Jamie played at Aragon, and went on to the collegiate ranks at College of San Mateo before transferring to University of the Pacific. Her father Vic also comes from a background in athletics, basketball specifically, and coached the Carlmont girls’ junior-varsity hoops team for the past three seasons.

Trierweiler is set to play at Santa Clara University next season, an achievement she also attributes to being a second-generation standout athlete.

“I think it comes a lot from my mom and my dad,” Trierweiler said. “My mom went through the whole same process I’m going through. … Her influence on me through her coaching, she taught me nothing is given, everything is earned.”

The skill set is certainly one of a prodigy. Her natural-looking left-handed swing is actually built in. Trierweiler does everything else right-handed, including fielding. Like so many children of elite athletes, though, she was encouraged to bat from the left side, which is traditionally viewed as an advantage over batting right-handed, especially on the softball diamond where the distance between bases is just 60 feet.

“I’m pretty sure the reason I bat left-handed is because I really sucked right-handed,” Trierweiler said. “So my dad was like, ‘OK go over to the other side.’ And I guess it kind of stuck.”

In the early stages of her varsity career, the left-handed alacrity paid off. Trierweiler was considered an expert slasher, hence the just-make-contact-and-run-like-heck approach.

“My goal throughout the season is to not be held hitless in more than one or two games in a row,” Trierweiler said. “And I think I achieved that pretty well.”

Hitting safely in 97 of the 105 varsity games in which she appeared throughout her career, Trierweiler accomplished her mission. But the slasher stigma went by the wayside through her senior year as the lefty’s slugging numbers spiked in a big way.

A career .664 slugger, including a .733 slugging percentage as a junior, Trierweiler posted an .840 slugging clip her senior season. Having tripled just twice through her first three varsity seasons, she totaled four triples in 2019. With just one previous varsity homer, she went deep three times this year.

To step into the Carlmont history books, however, she went back to the old-school approach. At the start of this season, Trierweiler had the Carlmont hits record in her sights, a mark set by Janelle Yousef in 2000 with 194 hits. Trierweiler stepped onto the field at Aragon on Monday, May 13, with 192 career hits. She went on to record a 3-for-4 day, executing a bunt single in the sixth inning for No. 195.

And she finished her Carlmont career by leading the Scots to their third straight PAL Bay Division championship, third straight CCS Open Division berth and 33rd straight CCS appearance, Trierweiler expressed disappointment over the Scots’ elimination in the CCS semifinals, falling short of a shot at her first section crown and Carlmont’s first since 2014.

“Being honest, no (I wasn’t satisfied), I really wanted to win CCS,” Trierweiler said. “The cards just didn’t fall in our favor, I guess. Other than that, we did achieve a lot of the goals we set at the beginning of the season.”