Post Falls High senior slugger/catcher Alyssa Krause is TROUBLE on the softball field — but in a good way

By MARK NELKE

Sports editor

Alyssa Krause grew up wanting to be a pitcher.

Somewhere around the fifth grade, starting her club softball career with the Coeur d’Alene Crush, she tried out in the circle.

“And my team put me behind the plate for one game, and all of a sudden I wanted nothing to do with pitching,” Krause recalled. “I fell in love with catching, and that’s what I do now.”

These days, Krause is a senior power hitter, a defensive standout at catcher and a four-year starter on the Post Falls High softball team.

Even with some teams pitching around her, and others intentionally walking her, she has totaled 12 home runs in 16 games this season for Post Falls (12-4, 9-3 Inland Empire League).

And defensively, few teams try to run on her.

“She was coming into the Crush Dome (an indoor hitting facility on the property of former Crush and former Post Falls High coach Brian Stranger in Dalton Gardens) starting at 5 and 6 years old, which is when I first met her, and I took a liking to her,” said Mike Cavanagh, Krause’s hitting coach and a Post Falls High softball assistant coach. “I nicknamed her ‘Trouble’; just that look in her eye; she had that look that she’s gonna be trouble — but in a good way.”

ALL THIS power comes from someone who stands all of 5 feet, 2 inches tall.

Krause hit a team-high three homers as a freshman in 2019. The following year, the spring sports season was suspended, then eventually canceled, due to COVID-19 before Post Falls could even play a game.

Last season, Krause hit six homers in 23 games for a Trojan team that advanced to state.

This year, she already has the 12 homers in 16 games, as well as 38 RBIs and a .674 batting average. She’s been walked 10 times.

“I know Mike worked with her a lot, so I heard about all the work she was putting in,” said first-year Post Falls head coach Katy Sinn, a JV assistant coach in the Trojans program the past two seasons. “She’s been working all winter and all fall, hitting pretty consistently, working hard all offseason. We knew she was going to do something big this year, just with how much work she’s been putting in. (She’s) definitely improved in her appearances at the plate, her mindset. You see her step into the batter’s box and you know something’s going to happen. There’s no worries, no fear when Alyssa’s up to bat, because you know she’s going to make something happen.”

“I think she’s had the power; it’s just the consistency with her hands to the ball, things like that that have improved,” Cavanagh said.

Krause grew up playing in the Crush program, then after her team folded, she has played for the USA Explosion, based in the Tri-Cities, for the past three years.

Cavanagh coached in the Crush program for years. His daughter, Bailey, played at Lake City High and North Idaho College, and is now an assistant coach at Lake City.

In recent years, Krause would call up Mike Cavanagh and she would hit; she hits at the Crush Dome year-round.

“A lot of it is talking; her mechanics are so dialed in; a lot of it is just situational,” he said. “Bailey picked up a few things at NIC that have helped with Alyssa’s swing.”

Last summer, working with Mike Cavanagh, and playing fall ball with the Explosion is when everything began to come together for Krause.

“I already had the mechanics, so we just worked on opening up my zone, like for outside pitches, low pitches … and that’s definitely helped me this year,” Krause said. “Last year I definitely chased a lot of balls outside my zone, and now I have opened up where I can hit them with authority.”

“It was just hand placement,” Cavanagh said. “Her hands had gotten into a weird position at contact. It probably took six months (to fix). Her hands are so fast when she swings that you’ve kinda got to slow stuff down.”

He said Krause’s power also comes from her bat speed. Plus, she’s strong; she’s in the weight room.

Krause said her power comes from her legs, and her mechanics.

“Short and powerful, that’s what my hitting coach (Cavanagh) always says,” she said. “‘Like you, you’re short, and you're powerful.’”

In past years, Cavanagh said, Krause was a dead pull hitter — she would take the low inside pitch and drive it.

Now, she punishes everything — everywhere.

“She’s refined her swing,” Cavanagh said. “Her swing is just the same on an inside pitch as an outside pitch. She’s just got a little smarter, reading what pitch is coming, and what to expect, and not trying to do too much, and deal with what they give her.

“It’s maybe my own philosophy to look to hit from the middle away … she’s developed her power to the opposite field, so she can hit the ball out to any part of the ballpark. She had a grand slam against Moses Lake that was to right center.”

Krause has learned to hit pitches out of her “zone.”

“We’ve talked about that a lot,” Cavanagh said. “I told her, if I’m coaching against you there’s no way I’m throwing you inside. I’m throwing you high and outside, so she’s learned to hit the high pitch, but she kills the low ball. From her ankles to her shins, you don’t want to throw it there, because she will kill it there.”

Defensively, Krause has been an accomplished catcher for years.

“She's just showing that she means business (behind the plate), and the girls don’t run on her,” Sinn said.

KRAUSE HAS lived in the same house her whole life, attending Prairie View Elementary, Post Falls Middle School and now Post Falls High.

Her dad, Marcus, played baseball at Eastern Oregon and at Lewis-Clark State, and is one of her role models.

“My dad says I’m a lot more athletic than he ever was,” Alyssa said.

She’s a 3.5 GPA student.

“It keeps me motivated to keep my grades up, and it keeps me motivated to go to class, because I have to go to class to be able to practice … so it just keeps me on schedule,” Krause said.

Her family has a cabin in Fernwood, near St. Maries.

“So I go hunting, I go camping, fishing, we go snowmobiling, four-wheeling; I do everything outside,” she said. “The best eating is elk so I like hunting for elk the most … I usually get a deer every year.”

Krause has signed to play softball next year at Big Bend Community College in Moses Lake — but there’s a catch.

The coach she signed with at Big Bend, Ron Thompson, is president of her USA Explosion club program. Krause was Thompson’s first recruit to Big Bend, but he was coach there for only a few months before stepping down last winter.

Though she has signed a letter of intent, she said she can get out of it because the coach that signed her won’t be coaching at the school when she gets there.

“I’m still going there, but I’m still keeping my options open,” Krause said.

Because of her grades, she wouldn’t have to stay two years there; she could leave after one season. Or she could choose to sign elsewhere.

“I know I have a fallback plan,” she said. “I’m still committed there, and I think that’s the route I’m going to take.”

Krause said another of her role models is Bubba Gleaves, a 2019 Post Falls High grad who is playing softball at Columbia of the Ivy League, and has started all 35 games this season for the Lions.

“Just the way she led by example, and that’s kinda what I do — I lead more by example,” said Krause, who has been entrusted to share her catching knowledge with younger budding backstops in the program.

Apparently the only way to get Krause out on a consistent basis these days might be to offer to tie her shoes.

“I cannot double-knot my shoes when I play, because I usually do not do very well when I play … I just don’t do well on that day,” she said. “I played one game (a few years ago, with the Crush) where we tested it out. I double-knotted them and I didn’t do too hot, and then I tied them like I regularly do and I did just fine.”