Syriahs Trolson wasn’t always collected under pressure.
When she was in her softball pitching infancy at 13 years old, the stress would often get the best of the right-hander. Sometimes, just walking a batter was enough for tears to well up in her eyes.
But Trolson, now an incoming junior at North Thurston High School, has put in the work and the mileage in the circle. She’s coming off a sophomore season with the Rams where she threw 95.1 innings and over 1,800 pitches, and as North Thurston gears up for a crack at its first state run since 2015, she’ll likely be tasked with an ever bigger workload.
Trolson is using this summer with the Washington Avengers 16-and-under club to make sure she’s ready to put North Thurston on her back this spring.
Her biggest improvement over the years, she said, has been her mindset, something she’s still perfecting. Trolson’s home is the circle, and she’s the most locked in when the pressure is at its highest. Yet she admits she still gets in her head at the plate and when she’s called into the infield on defense.
So far, the Cascades National Championship has given her an opportunity to break through a 1-for-13 hitting slump, knocking in a pair of hits and an RBI in the second game of a three-game Thursday afternoon at Recreation Park in Chehalis.
“It’s been a lot of tee work. Tee work is more than people make it seem. It works on every part of your mechanics,” Trolson said of overcoming the slump. “I get in my head a lot. When I go up there and just don’t think, I hit the ball.”
Trolson started the tournament by winning the “golden arm” competition during opening day festivities at the Regional Athletic Complex Wednesday, showing off her accuracy by throwing into nets from a distance.
In the near future, Trolson hopes to transfer her unflappable nature in the circle to the other phases of her game. North Thurston head coach Sam Harding has often used the phrase “memory of a goldfish” to describe Trolson’s mentality in the circle. Even when things don’t go her way, she stays positive and keeps attacking by throwing hitters off guard with her curveball and riseball combo.
Trolson, who has played softball year-round since she started high school, now yearns for the moments she often feared just a couple of years ago. That includes hearing chants from opposing dugouts about her slower style of pitching, as she tops out around 53 mph.
“It just gives me motivation. Even in those tough games, I’ll turn around and laugh,” Trolson said of the chants. “I think it’s so funny because they think it’s gonna get to me. Obviously, I want to pick up velocity. In high school, teams like Timberline have a lot of club players, and they’re used to playing at a really high level and they see a lot of faster pitching. When they see me as someone who is slow, it kind of throws them off a little bit.
“I would say I work best under stress when I’m pitching.”
Trolson played recreational softball for the first time around the age of 10 for one season. She played other sports such as volleyball and track and field in eighth grade up until her freshman year, when she fully transitioned back to softball. The joy of team camaraderie drew her to stick with softball, as well as the opportunity to quickly improve from game to game, pitch to pitch.
“I take a lot of pitching and hitting lessons. I want to be good at this sport, so I’ve got to put in a lot of work,” Trolson said. “When I’m just in my backyard hitting off the tee and playing music, it’s peaceful. It’s like a relaxer. I’m not stressed out. Summer ball helps me play more freely. This past high school season taught me just to play loose and have fun because there’s a lot of mental battles that you have to go through.”
In her first summer season as a part of the Avengers program, Trolson has enjoyed the sisterhood and the positivity on the team. While she credits the coaches from her previous club New Level Softball for building her confidence in softball, she said her new teammates have allowed her to maintain that confidence through the ups and downs of the season.
The North Thurston Rams promise to be an exciting squad in 2027 behind Trolson, her sister Saihdee Trolson, Paige Guyer, and Abigail McBride, the latter of which faced Syriahs Trolson on an opposing team Thursday. Trolson, donning black and red, and McBride, wearing the bright orange of the Xtreme Fastpitch 16U club, went toe to toe as opponents for the fourth time this summer.
“I know what she doesn’t like, so I pitch that to her every time. She knows it’s coming,” Trolson said.
Trolson isn’t fazed by the amount of innings she endured in the spring of 2026, and she won’t back down from an increase in 2027. Halfway through her prep career, she’s poised to be one of the area’s top softball players over the next two seasons thanks to the work she puts in across all aspects of the game, especially the mental side.
If someone could show 13-year-old Syriahs Trolson the growth she’s made in softball over the last three years for that previous sentence to be a fair assessment, particularly as a pitcher, she wouldn’t believe it. But the mental growth has trumped every technique tweak in that span, and she knows she’s not finishing growing.
“I’ve had to build myself up so much. I never thought I would really stick with it or make it,” Trolson said of pitching. “My curveball and my riseball were really hard to learn when I was younger. My riseball still isn’t perfect. If I saw the way that the ball moved when I was 13 to now, it’s a lot different.”
