Without her biggest fan, heavy-hearted Hempfield ace Riley Miller overcoming grief while mowing down competition for defending WPIAL champs

To say Hempfield’s Riley Miller pitches with a poise beyond her years still wouldn’t quite do her enough justice.

After bursting onto the scene as a freshman sensation in 2022, Miller’s breakout campaign came to an abrupt halt when she broke her foot while sliding into second base in a first-round playoff win against Norwin, causing her to miss the team’s season-ending WPIAL semifinal defeat against eventual champion Seneca Valley. Miller missed an entire offseason of travel ball while rehabbing her injury, then came back better than ever for the Spartans as a sophomore, posting a 19-4 record with a 1.22 ERA and 184 strikeouts to 29 walks in 144 innings.

The Kent State recruit capped off her remarkable comeback by leading Hempfield to its sixth WPIAL title in eight seasons with an eight-inning masterpiece in a 2-1 win against the defending champion Raiders. The Spartans’ season then culminated in an epic pitchers’ duel between Miller and two-time Gatorade Pa. Player of the Year Julia Shearer, ending in a 1-0 loss against North Penn in the PIAA Class 6A championship game.

So how could Miller possibly top that as a junior? Well, so far, Hempfield’s ace has the Spartans (13-1, 11-1) primed for another top-two seed in the WPIAL playoffs, with a chance to split the section title if they can take down Seneca Valley superstar Lexie Hames and the Raiders in a high-stakes rematch at home on Wednesday.

Think Miller and her teammates are looking forward to that one?

“It’s always a good matchup between us,” Miller said. “It’s definitely exciting, but very stressful sometimes. Nerve-wracking, I guess you could say. You’ve just got to take it one pitch at a time and focus on your job in the game.

“Just the competition between us, going back and forth — it’s always fun to see what the next game brings.”

Ever since a 2-0 loss in the first matchup against Seneca Valley on April 11, Hempfield has rattled off nine wins in a row while allowing a grand total of just three runs, including six shutouts — and Miller has been at the forefront. At one point, she fired two five-inning no-hitters against North Allegheny and Mt. Lebanon in a span of three days, while allowing one hit with 20 strikeouts over a four-game stretch across 14 innings.

Then, in the midst of arguably the best stretch of her career, Miller received the heartbreaking news last Wednesday that her grandmother Diana Miller passed away suddenly at the age of 79. Although the Spartans had a pivotal game scheduled for 4 p.m. against Canon-McMillan, coach Tina Madison excused Miller to go home and be with her family. But knowing her “gram” was both her and the team’s No. 1 fan — not to mention one of their most trusted scorekeepers — Miller and her family agreed that she would have wanted her to play.

“They were the first people at every game, her grandma and her pap,” Madison said. “They were our biggest fans. They were so kind to me. They were just very big supporters of Hempfield softball. It was an extreme loss for us. She will be greatly missed.

“We’ll take another angel on our side, that’s for sure.”

Taking the circle with a heavy heart, the always-stoic Miller battled through her emotions and put her trademark mental toughness, grit and perseverance on full display, limiting the Big Macs to one run while striking out six in five innings of work in a 6-1 win.

Would you have expected anything less?

“It was hard to keep my mind in the game and focus, just knowing that she wasn’t there,” Miller said. “She kept score at every game. She never missed a game. She was my biggest fan, but now I just have to play for her and know she’s watching me from up above.”

In an effort to keep Miller’s arm fresh for the playoffs, along with giving her time off to attend her grandmother’s funeral services, Madison has inserted flame-throwing sophomore closer Julia Varhola into the starting role in recent games. Varhola has been nothing short of dominant in Miller’s stead, giving Hempfield a scary one-two punch of top-notch pitchers to rely on. But now that Miller is back for the stretch run, there’s no question that the Spartans’ championship hopes and dreams of forming another dynasty are riding on her rocket of a right arm — and there’s nobody more equipped to embrace that pressure than Miller.

Just look at her track record for proof.

“She is really sharp right now,” Madison said. “I would say she is at the top of her game.”

Through the first 14 games in 2024, Miller is 9-1 with 56 strikeouts to 16 walks in 50 innings pitched, and she owns a minuscule ERA of 0.56 and WHIP of 0.76. But maybe her most impressive feat of all is the fact that Miller is the only WPIAL pitcher to defeat Hames and the Raiders in the past two seasons — and she has done it twice, including once on the biggest stage. Miller and Hames are 2-2 against each other going into their highly anticipated fifth showdown on Wednesday, and most are already forecasting a sixth clash between the two in the WPIAL Class 6A championship game.

So if Hames is a generational talent and one of the best players the WPIAL has ever seen, what does that make Miller?

“Here’s the deal. Lexie is outstanding. She has the big strikeout numbers and she’s just a heck of a pitcher. I’ll be the first one to admit that,” Madison said. “Riley gets overshadowed a little bit. But it doesn’t matter. … We’ll see what happens at the end.”

Sure, Miller doesn’t throw 70 mph like Hames, but a low-60s fastball is nothing to sneeze at. Throw in her back-breaking drop curve and soul-snatching changeup, coupled with her impeccable command and mastery of the strike zone, and you have all the makings of a future Division I star.

And to top it all off, Miller is a prime example of a big-game pitcher who always shines when the lights are brightest — no matter what form of adversity stands in her way.

“I just know I’m playing for her now,” Miller said about her grandmother. “It gives me a reason to go out there and do well. She’s watching, so it makes the game mean more to me now.”