Hall of Fame
It is incredible how the career path of Bridgette Plummer mirrored the flight of so many of the softballs she hit in her four years at Utica. Plummer possessed a thunderous bat, a reliable glove, and an infectious spirit that made her a hit with her teammates and classmates alike. All of these important attributes not only elevated Plummer to rarefied air as a player, but elevated the entire Utica College softball program.
Plummer played in more games than any player in the history of the program with 162, and appeared in all but one game in her entire career. The career .353 hitter posted the tenth-highest batting average in school history in a school-record 538 at-bats, and is seventh in career on-base percentage in program history. She scored 107 runs to rank third in Pioneer history, is third with 190 career hits, third with 37 career doubles, fourth with 16 career home runs, and had 105 runs batted in to also rank third in school history. She had a 98.1 percent fielding percentage during her career.
She was an All-Region selection in 2011, and a four-time all-conference pick during her career, and she announced her arrival quite loudly in the 2010 season when she was a first team Empire 8 all-conference pick. She hit .368 that year with six homers, and set a new single season school record for RBI as a rookie with 40.
She was a consistently good hitter and run producer for the next three seasons as well. Plummer never dipped below a .300 batting average for a season. She hit .385 for the best batting average season of her career as a sophomore.
For all of her early individual success, the best was yet to come as the team around her continued to evolve. The Pioneers went 22-17 in 2012 when Plummer was a junior for a second straight winning season, and she was part of an emerging core that would have a season for the books in 2013. As Plummer hit .327 with seven homers while driving in 31 runs, the rest of the team hummed right along as a balanced lineup recorded team school records for batting average (.355), runs scored (322), and a convincing school record for homers in a season with 46, which is nearly double their second best total in school history.
Those numbers created a fantastic end result. The Pioneers were the 2013 Empire 8 Conference regular season champions and went on to host the conference tournament at Greenman Field, which became a hub of activity on a near-perfect spring weekend. The Pioneers finished as the runner-up in the tournament to St. John Fisher, but were rewarded for their 34 wins as they received an at-large selection into the NCAA tournament. At the Ithaca regional, the Pioneers got their first-ever NCAA tournament win against Penn State-Berks. In a loss the previous day to Washington College, Plummer was at the plate as Utica plated its first NCAA tournament run.
After her senior season, Plummer received the Dick Miller award at the 2013 Pioneer Hall of Fame dinner.
