As the NC State softball team prepares to travel to Notre Dame this weekend, redshirt senior right-handed pitcher Abby Trahan already knows a lot about traveling. Softball has taken her a long way from Kaplan, Louisiana, but Trahan has thoroughly enjoyed the journey.
About 30 miles southwest of Lafayette, Louisiana, Trahan said she picked up softball “as one of the thousand kids that were playing” as she grew up. Coming out of high school, Trahan would make her first long trip in the name of the game to Pennsylvania to play at St. Francis for current Wolfpack softball head coach Jennifer Patrick-Swift. The two would get along famously thanks to Patrick-Swift’s trademark emphasis on the home run.
“This has been my fourth year with [Patrick-Swift] teaching [the home run mentality] because she taught that at St. Francis, and I love it as a pitcher,” Trahan said. “Home runs are runs that make my job a thousand times easier. So if we’re hitting two home runs a game, we’re already winning by two runs and that’s taking a lot of the load off of my job.”
That one season without that mindset was during Trahan’s 2019 season at Southern Miss, her only season of collegiate softball without Patrick-Swift. Despite earning recognition as Conference USA’s 2019 Pitcher of the Year, Trahan was eager to work with Patrick-Swift again, transferring to NC State for her senior year. It turned out to be a good fit for Trahan, who was excited at the prospect of becoming part of the Wolfpack.
“Even without coach Patrick-Swift, I would have chosen NC State,” Trahan said. “I like everything about Raleigh and the school… And then coming to NC State, seeing the campus and how the fans are on social media and how nice the facilities are, it solidified that this is the perfect place for me because in every aspect it checked off every box I had.”
The step up to a major softball conference like the ACC was certainly a challenge, but Trahan has adjusted well as she and redshirt sophomore right-handed pitcher Sydney Nester carry the bulk of the starts for the Pack. Trahan spoke highly of the depth of talent in ACC softball compared to her time in Conference USA.
“The biggest difference would be the level of competition is different, which is a given, but it’s different where everybody on every team is insanely good,” Trahan said. “In the ACC, everyone is good and everyone is a stud, everyone is high ranked. The level of competition is different. In the ACC, you can’t show up at practice and have a bad day because that’s one day where you’re behind everyone else in the ACC, and that’s a lot different than from Conference USA.”
After all her travels from Kaplan, Louisiana to NC State and everywhere in between, Trahan has come to love Raleigh and NC State.
“I like how there’s so much mixture in Raleigh,” Trahan said. “There are people from everywhere that live here and people from everywhere that go to NC State and people travel here and fall in love with the place. I think everyone is really passionate about loving Raleigh, and I love that about it.”
