Arizona’s Kaiah Altmeyer is hoisted by her teammates after a walk-off home run against ASU on Apr. 19, 2024. | Photo courtesy of Arizona Athletics Arizona softball is starting to stack up the weekly Pac-12 awards. The Wildcats had only won freshman of the week awards this season until last week. Now, they not only have a fourth Pac-12 Freshman of the Week award but they also have back-to-back Player of the Week awards. Sophomore Kaiah Altmeyer, who has played right field and designated player this season, was honored with the first Pac-12 Player of the Week award of her career one week after Olivia DiNardo won the same honor. Regan Shockey, who has started in centerfield since she arrived at Arizona, took her conference-leading fourth Pac-12 Freshman of the Week award. Altmeyer got the nod in right field this weekend as senior Jasmine Perezchica dealt with an illness. The younger player took full advantage of her opportunities. She went 5-for-8 at the plate, hitting .625 in the three-game sweep of Arizona State. Two of Altmeyer’s hits were home runs, including the walk-off home run in game one of the series. In game two, she hit a two-run homer in a 2-for-2 day at the plate. She also scored three times in the run-rule victory. Altmeyer didn’t just make an impact on offense. On defense, she robbed ASU’s Alesia Denby of a home run in the seventh inning of Sunday’s win over the Sun Devils. At the time, ASU led by two runs. The Wildcats came back to win by one on Carlie Scupin’s walk-off single in the bottom of the inning. Shockey now has two more Freshman of the Week awards than anyone else in the Pac-12. Both UCLA’s Kaitlyn Terry and Stanford’s Ava Gall have won it twice this season. The centerfielder went 5-for-11 at the plate for a .455 average. She scored three times against the Sun Devils including two runs in the 13-3 victory on Saturday. On Sunday, she went 4-for-4 and scored the winning run from first base on Scupin’s two-RBI single in the seventh. The recognition likely puts Shockey in the driver’s seat for Pac-12 Freshman of the Year. Her .420 batting average ranks 40th overall in NCAA Division I softball. It leads Pac-12 freshmen and the Wildcats as a team. She’s the only Wildcat with qualifying stats to hit over .400 this season. Her average is fourth among DI freshmen and second among major conference freshmen, trailing only Florida State’s Jaysoni Beachum in the ACC. The Wildcats have one more conference series to play. They travel to UCLA this weekend and play in the Pac-12 Tournament May 8-11.

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