Cedarburg's Paytn Monticelli makes impact on and off the field
CEDARBURG, WI (CBS 58) - Cedarburg senior softball pitcher Paytn Monticelli has had a strong follow up season after being named the 2021 Wisconsin Gatorade Player of the Year.
"We expect to be in every game when she's on the mound," said Mark Jessup, Cedarburg softball co-head coach along with Jeff Langkamp.
This season, Paytn Monticelli has an ERA under 0.4 and blew past the school record of 656 strikeouts with 774 career strikeouts in three seasons.
"So I'm still climbing, now my goal is 800," laughed Monticelli.
"With her success that she had last year she could have took it easy but again she wants to continue to get better, especially as she goes into college," said Coach Jessup.
Picking a college was an easy choice for Monticelli. She committed to Wisconsin in October of 2020. She'd already been waiting close to a decade to go there and couldn't imagine going anywhere else.
"I actually just received my fifth-grade time capsule," said Monticelli. "And I wrote I want to play softball at UW Madison."
While Paytn looks to strikeout plenty of batters while wearing the W, she also looks forward to getting involved in the Badgers Forward 360 program (hyperlink: Forward 360 | Wisconsin Badgers (uwbadgers.com)).
"They give back to the community in Madison and they do a lot of work with special needs kids and teaching them how to play sports, which is pretty cool," said Monticelli.
That's nothing new for Paytn. In the past she's worked with HeartSafe Wisconsin teaching kids about CPR and raising money for AEDs in schools.
With Globall Giving, a Milwaukee based organization that believes every kid should have a chance to play a sport, she helped prepare new and used sports equipment to send to kids around Wisconsin and the world…
"I see all these videos of them learning to pitch and learning to throw and hit. And its just so cool seeing the impact all the way across the world," said Monticelli.
Spending her own time and energy for others, is an easy decision.
"My parents pretty much raised me to help in any way that I could so once I got introduced to global giving and heart safe Wisconsin, I kinda just fell in love with it like I fell in love with softball," said Monticelli.
"The local softball feeder club, she helps with coaching. She does pitching lessons," said coach Jessup. "She just knows that giving back and helping others that helped her. Or giving young girls opportunities that she had also, it just shows that's she's well rounded."
Now Monticelli hopes to help the Bulldogs make a return trip to state. Cedarburg is the 2-seed in Division 1 Section 7 and will face the winner of Brookfield East and Brookfield Central on Thursday, May 26th at 4:30pm in Regionals.
Last season the Bulldogs made it to state for the 10th time overall, but the first since 2004.