Sami Potvin is such an effective pitching instructor that she often walks away from a session with something new or a tweak for her own game.
In the more than three years she’s been an instructor, she has always hammered home fundamentals with her students, especially those newer to the sport.
Potvin, who is spending her summer giving back to her hometown by offering 60-minute pitching lessons at D-BAT Lacey, focuses on facets like having a strong front side and a good arm path. The mechanics and power behind specific pitches come next, and then she helps pitchers develop confidence in the circle.
When she watches her students apply her advice, Potvin keeps an open mind as to how she can improve her own game.
“Once I started giving lessons, I have learned a lot just through watching younger girls and even listening to myself a little bit,” Potvin said. “I see things in them and I’m like, ‘Maybe I should try that,’ or, ‘That’s something that I’m weak in. Maybe I should listen to myself.’”
There aren’t many more qualified people in Thurston County from which to take softball pitching advice.
After all, Potvin, a 2024 Olympia High School graduate and former four-year starting pitcher and letterwinner for the Bears, earned a scholarship to play Division I softball at Iowa State University following a legendary prep career. She was a three-time South Puget Sound League pitcher of the year and took home the league MVP honor twice. In just her third career start at Iowa State, she threw the program’s first perfect game in over 40 years and the second perfect game ever in school history.
Potvin is in the midst of a summer of transition, as the Division I collegiate pitcher opted to transfer from Iowa State University after two years as a Cyclone to the University of Nevada, Reno, to join the Wolf Pack. Potvin returned home from Iowa in May and will head to Reno for school in mid-August, showing young pitchers the ropes at D-BAT Lacey in the meantime.
“Growing up with such good pitching coaches who got me where I am, I just wanted to try it. I honestly grew to love giving lessons at Iowa State,” said Potvin, who worked with athletes for six months while in Ames. “I really enjoyed watching those girls grow and progress and hear about how they did in their tournaments. It’s been really rewarding.”
Potvin teaches lessons three days a week at D-BAT Lacey: Thursday evenings, Friday evenings, and Sundays. In her Friday, July 9 lesson with 11-year-old Jiana DeGuzman, Potvin, wearing a Nevada softball T-shirt, introduced herself and explained the process of the 60-minute session. Together, the two pitchers worked on grips, releases and power.
At the end of the lesson, Potvin gave DeGuzman a pen and piece of paper to write down three things that she enjoyed and took away from the session, whether it was a drill or mechanic tweak that made her better. Potvin took that activity from an old pitching coach and has used it since she started giving lessons as a junior at Oly.
“I like doing that because positive thinking and confidence is super important at that age,” Potvin said. “Having those things to work on, especially in game situations when I’m not there to help them, they can think, ‘OK, I was struggling with this in my lessons. What helped me with this? Remember those three things.’ If it’s a rough day, it may be two things or whatever they can think of. Just think of a positive that they can carry into the next pitching session.”
Potvin is currently working with three students while at D-Bat Lacey, with girls often coming back weekly for more tips. Her instruction has shown tangible results in DeGuzman so far. The soon-to-be sixth grader at Salish Middle School had a successful run in the Cascades National Championship with the Brooklyn Belles 10U team last weekend. She struck out seven batters on two different occasions in the days following her lesson with Potvin.
“It’s rewarding to recognize that I’m helping these girls reach their dreams because that’s exactly what I wanted to be when I was their age,” Potvin said. “I had huge dreams of playing in college at a high level when I was their age. It’s about watching them grow and that I’m able to help them like my pitching coaches helped me.”
Potvin started playing baseball at 9 years old and moved to club softball at 12 years old, when she fell in love with pitching. Within a year, she already reached 60 mph with her fastball. She was immediately a star pitcher at Olympia High School, racking up over 200 strikeouts in three consecutive seasons and leading the Bears to three straight state tournaments.
In four years at Olympia, she recorded a total of 788 strikeouts compared to just 60 walks in 426 innings of work with a staggering 1.77 earned run average.
Potvin committed to Iowa State in October 2022 as a junior and signed in November 2023, five months before the start of her senior year, which she played with younger sister Sydney, who is entering her senior year at Oly. In her first season at ISU, Sami appeared in 17 games and threw 28.2 innings, finishing with a 2-0 record and a 6.59 earned run average.
But throughout much of the season, Potvin dealt with pain in her right elbow, her pitching arm, but battled through it and even threw her perfect game while enduring pain. The discomfort grew so sharp that she stopped pitching in May 2025, and she eventually learned that she had a bone spur in her elbow that needed surgery to be removed. She underwent the procedure in October and medically redshirted for the entirety of her sophomore season, even though she said she could have returned halfway through. Instead, Potvin and her coaches decided to preserve her year of eligibility, despite pitching on her own and in practice again halfway through the campaign.
“It definitely was frustrating. I had never had a large injury that stopped me from pitching for that long,” Potvin said. “I didn’t throw for seven months. The hardest part was not being able to play and almost feeling guilty for not being able to help my teammates. Not being able to put the uniform on was strange. The strangest part was working in practice and then not using it in games.”
Potvin announced her intention to transfer from Iowa State on May 27 with three years of eligibility remaining. On June 24, she committed to Nevada to play for head coach Victoria Hayward, a 2020 Olympic bronze medalist who has turned the Wolf Pack into a powerhouse in the Mountain West.
It’s a bit of a homecoming for Potvin, sort of. She was born in Henderson, Nevada, but moved to Washington when she was about a year old. Her mother Kathryn practiced law in Las Vegas for years, and her father Christopher graduated from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Her parents were both collegiate athletes at California Lutheran University.
While traveling back from Iowa in May, Sami and her father took a road trip to see college campuses, and the University of Nevada, Reno, was one of their stops.
Potvin had plenty of offers from schools despite missing a season with injury, but she was waiting the whole time for Nevada to reach out.
“I really, really loved Reno and fell in love with it. I was really hoping they would reach out the whole time, and as soon as they did, I gave it a day, thought about it, and went over some of the other offers,” Potvin said. “Once I really thought about it, I knew I really couldn’t go wrong [with Nevada]. The coaching staff there is amazing. They’ve been able to completely rebuild that program in a positive way. It’s just an awesome place to be, so I’m super excited.”
Potvin came to the official decision to commit to Nevada while in the middle of working as an intern at Putnam Lieb Potvin Dailey, her mom’s law firm in Olympia. She stepped outside in her formal attire on June 24 to call the coaches and let them know her decision.
But before she heads to Reno next month, Potvin is working on returning to form in the circle. She’s not far off, as she’s nearing the same velocity she hit as a freshman at Iowa State. Not only is she growing physically stronger, but she’s becoming a more confident leader and scholar of the game through her pitching lessons in her hometown, a place that has supported her through thick and thin.
“I always have felt that Olympia is home. I had a really great experience through high school softball,” Potvin said. “I still have so many good friends here that I hang out with and spend time with. I think I really had to get away from Olympia to appreciate it. I went away and noticed that I’m super lucky to have grown up in a place like this. That’s a big reason why I transferred. I just wanted to come back to an area similar to here.”
To learn more about D-BAT Lacey and book a lesson, visit https://www.dbatlacey.com/.
