Coral Springs Charter continues to churn out dominant pitchers. Courtney Wahlbrink grew up watching those stars, and now she is the latest in a long line of aces.
The Panthers freshman was a workhorse, pitching in nearly every game and dominating opponents. Despite being a freshman, she is the Sun Sentinel’s Broward County Class 5A-1A player of the year.
“When I was little, I would watch Charter all the time,” Wahlbrink said. “I just feel like all my preparations and everything I’ve been doing going into this high school season really helped me. The adjustments that I made was just knowing that my team has my back.”
Although she is in her first year of high school, Wahlbrink has been on Coral Springs Charter’s varsity team for three seasons. She played in 10 games as a seventh-grader and pitched 34 2/3 innings in 2023.
She was effective in limited time last year, but she knew she would have a bigger task as the team’s primary starter as a freshman.
“I definitely trained really hard this summer and it’s definitely different pitching for high school than it is for my travel softball team,” Wahlbrink said. “But I worked really hard to be where I am now.”
She delivered. Wahlbrink pitched 151 innings, notching a 25-3 record with a 0.46 ERA. She pitched 10 complete games with six shutouts. She struck out 213 batters and walked only 35.
“I do care about strikeouts, but I care more about the outcome of the batter getting out,” Wahlbrink said. “Most of my pitches were working. My best pitch was probably my changeup or my screwball this year.”
Wahlbrink was no slouch at the plate either. She hit .339 with one home run, 12 RBIs and a .918 OPS.
“Putting work into both of them is definitely very time-consuming, but putting in the work to make myself better at both of them is really important to me. I really want to focus on hitting going into this summer.
“It’s just the way to separate my pitching and my hitting; if I don’t have a good at-bat, I don’t bring it out to the mound. If I don’t have a good inning, I don’t bring it to the plate.”
