DONE DEAL: This is a best signing of the year….
FAYETTEVILLE — When the Arkansas softball team announced the addition of Mississippi State transfer pitcher Reis Beuerlein on June 20, the Razorbacks’ fan base grew by about 100 in one day.
Beuerlein, a sophomore right-hander from Cave Creek, Ariz., has more than 100 cousins due to her father being one of 12 children. Included in that figure is both first and second cousins.
“Eleven kids live in Arizona, and all of them are in Phoenix, except for the one,” Beuerlein said. “She comes and visits all the time. All of them have kids, and since my dad is the youngest, I’m closer in age with a lot of my second cousins than I am with my first cousins.
“So that’s kind of why I say 100, because it is first and second cousins, but I see all of them at every Thanksgiving, every Christmas, Easter and so on. Our family just keeps growing, so I have a ton of cousins, a ton of aunts and uncles. And the thing is I actually know all of them. They know all about me and I know all about them, which I think is pretty cool.”
Growing up she played many sports, but Beuerlein always gravitated toward softball. The sport eventually won her full affection.
“I played pretty much every other sport under the sun,” Beuerlein said. “But it was always ‘Softball, then whatever other sport I was playing at the time.’ I just loved softball and I stuck to it. When it came time where it was the age where you have to pick one sport to stick with, softball was my number one. It always was.”
It helped to have a father who knew a thing or two about catching pitches.
Ed Beuerlein was selected by the Milwaukee Brewers in the 1986 MLB Draft prior to his college career at Scottsdale (Ariz.) Community College and Louisiana Tech. He was a catcher and first baseman from 1990-92 in the minor leagues as part of the Houston Astros organization.
