How One Young Man Altered The Landscape of Girls' High School Softball In Minnesota

I have 3 daughters playing youth softball -- it's parents like me that need to end this idiocy.

This topic is quite personal. After having played college baseball (poorly) and Men’s Fastpitch Softball for 10+ years thereafter, I now have three daughters at various levels of Girl’s Youth Fastpitch Softball.

This story reflects how the decision to let boys play girls’ sports at any level - now up to varsity high school sports — distorts and destroys the entire exercise for the girls involved. This is not about the young man at issue here — it is about the adults in Minnesota who have abdicated being adults and the responsibility to say “No” to ridiculous suggestions and demands by an EXTRAORDINARILY small part of the country as a whole.

But that is one of the excuses/justifications given for giving in — it involves so few boys wanting to play on girls’ teams, how big of an issue can it be? As demonstrated by the information below, one boy is about to pervert the entire season of high school girls’ softball in Minnesota.

High school sports in Minnesota are classified from Class 1A to Class 4AAAA, with 4AAAA being the largest schools.

Champlin Park High School plays in Class 4AAAA, and is located in a suburban community north of Minneapolis. It is the third largest high school in the state, with a student population of almost 3000.

“Marrisa Rothenberger” is a boy playing girl’s softball for Champlin Park. Rothenberger is one of two primary pitchers used by Champlin Park this season. Champlin Park won the Class 4AAAA Section 5 Championship yesterday, and will now play in the Class 4AAAA State Championship June 3-6. Champlin Park beat Rogers High School yesterday 1-0 to claim the Section 5 Championship. It had beaten Rogers back on Monday in the semi-finals 2-0. Rothenberger was the starting and winning pitcher in both games — a combined 14 innings.

Rogers HS was the defending Class 4AAAA State Champion, having beaten Champlin Park 3-0 in the 2024 Section 5 Championship game to advance to the State Championship where it won. Rothenberg was not the starting pitcher in that game, but did pitch 1 inning.

Yesterday’s win in the Section 5 Championship game was Champlin Park’s 16th straight win. Over the course of the 2025 season, Champlin Park has used two girls as pitchers along with Rothenberger. One girl is a senior and the other is a sophomore. Only the sophomore has seen meaningful time as a pitcher, starting 10 of Champlain Park’s 24 games so far, with the senior starting 3. Rothenberger started the other 11 games this season.

Champlin Park has lost only 2 games in 2025 — the third game of the season (4-1) where the starting pitcher was the senior girl (Rothenberger did not pitch), and the seventh game of the season (5-4) where Rothenberger was the starting pitcher. The opponent that game ended up finishing 3rd in the Section 5 Championship last week.

In that one loss, the opposing team had only 2 hits, with 11 batters striking out. Of the 18 outs made, only 7 came as a result of the batter putting the ball in play. Rothenberger walked 4 batters, but his team made 2 errors — with 4 of the 5 runs scored being “unearned.” That means the runs would not have scored had it not been for the errors. So those 4 runs were because of his teammates’ mistakes. Rothenberger faced 24 batters in the game, and only 2 managed to get hits.

Overall for the season in the 11 games Rothenberger has pitched — 10 games he has been the starting pitcher — he has faced a total of 268 girls as batters. He struck out 92 of those girls and walked 8 others — so 100 out of 268 did not put the ball in play.

Only 9 earned runs were scored by the girls against him — and 14 runs overall. That means that only 1 out of every 19 girls who faced him scored.

He gave up only 35 total hits in those 11 games. The opposing girls batting against him had a batting average of only .143. He struck out 92 of the 268 girls he faced.

So he struck out 1 out of every 3 girls he faced, and 6 out of every 7 girls he faced could not get a hit.

Opposing teams scored only .86 runs against him per game. You tend to win a lot of games when the other team averages less than one run scored per game.

But Rothenberger started the Quarter-Final, Semi-Final, and Championship Final game over the past week, winning all three.

Let’s now take a look at the three Section 5 Championship tournament games between May 23 and May 29 — games where his coaçh decided to start Rothenberg every game even though he had been alternating the two main pitchers all season.

Rothenberger pitched 7 innings in each game — the two girls who had pitched during the season were not used.

Rothenberger faced a total of 78 batters, but only 2 scored runs — 1 out of every 39 girls faced, as compared to 1 out of every 19 during the season.

He gave up only 1 hit in the quarter-final game — but that was a 2-run home run. That one swing of the bat was responsible for the only 2 runs he gave up in the 3 playoff games.

In the semi-final and Championship Final games against Rogers HS — the defending 5A State Champion — the opposing girls did get 11 hits in the two games. But they scored no runs and Rothenberger struck out 14 girls.

There were 42 outs recorded by Champlin Park — 21 each game — so 1 out of every 3 outs was a strike out. Rothenberger didn’t walk anyone.

The 7 hits he gave up to Rogers HS in the Championship game tied for the most hits he had given up on a single game all season.

Rogers HS lost 6 games all season — 3 of those losses were to Champlin Park with Rothenberger pitching against them in each game. Rogers didn’t score in any of the three games. In the first game of the season, Rothenberger struck out 14 of the 24 girls he faced against Rogers.

Champlin Park now moves to the State Championship Tournament.

As far as the Section 5 season went, a single boy playing girl’s softball corrupted the entire season. His dominance was almost total. Only Rogers HS’s 7 hits in the Championship game showed the ability of any all-girls team to compete with him — and they still didn’t score a run.

The Champlin Park coach likely made a very conscious decision to alternate starting pitchers through the season and to not start Rothenberger in every game. He knew that had he done so it would have made a mockery of the league and the sport.

In the games Rothenberger did start, the runs he allowed to the opposing teams were as follows: 0, 3, 5, 1, 0, 0, 1, 2, 2, 0, and 0. Remember that in the one game were 5 runs were scored, 4 were unearned and resulted of fielding errors.

But when tournament time rolled around, the other two girls who were pitchers should have just worn the clothes they wore to school — Rothenberger was the only pitcher to face a batter during the 3 games in the tournament.

The State Championship tournament starts June 3, with the Championship Game set for June 6.

This will be the first time Champlin Park has ever played in the State Championship — imagine that.

I’ll update this story with the results.