Apr 27, 2025 By Jerin Steele 3 min read

When Ella Richey was in sixth grade, she’d tag along to the Chartiers-Houston varsity softball practices with her older sister Hanna.

Everyone once in a while she’d jump behind the plate and catch the varsity pitchers.

“Watching the older players in this program when you’re young, you really just wanted to be like them,” Richey said. “I knew catching them was going to be challenging, but I wanted to do it.”

Now, alongside her friend and battery mate Meadow Ferri, Richey has become that high school softball standout that she once looked up too.

Richey, a senior, had a .538 batting average with seven home runs, five triples and five doubles, while hitting from the lead-off spot, helping Chartiers-Houston to a 14-1 record overall and an unblemished 8-0 start in Class 2A Section 3.

The Bucs have backed up their WPIAL Class A championship with an impressive start in their move up to Class 2A.

Richey homered to lead off the bottom of the first in Tuesday’s 12-0 win over Our Lady of the Sacred Heart and followed that up by hitting two more home runs in Wednesday’s 11-0 win over Burgettstown.

Those three homers helped increase her OPS to a gaudy 2.161 and an equally impressive 1.488 slugging percentage entering Thursday. She also carries a .586 on base percentage, meaning she has been on base after well over half of her plate appearances.

An already great softball career has an exclamation point on it during her senior season. She’s done it while being a multi-sport athlete.

Richey was a starting guard on the Bucs’ girls basketball team that reached the state playoffs and a goalkeeper on the girls soccer team.

In softball, Richey has formed a dynamic duo with Ferri, a Kent State recruit.

Richey is a King University recruit, giving the Bucs future college players at both pitcher and catcher.

Ferri has hit well this year two, carrying a .462 batting average with six home runs. The two have combined to drive in 40 runs, 20 apiece.

Aside from the hitting, what’s made them a lethal pair has been their work as the Bucs’ pitcher and catcher.

In 13 starts, Ferri is 12-1 with 133 strikeouts to 18 walks and has yielded only 11 earned runs all season. Ferri authored a 17 strikeout no-hitter in an 8-1 win over Seton LaSalle Thursday.

Richey and Ferri have been working together all four years of high school softball and long before that as well.

They’ve developed an excellent rapport and Ferri appreciates Richey’s skills and leadership behind the plate.

“It’s definitely great having her back there,” Ferri said. “We have a connection…that pitcher and catcher bond, which definitely helps a lot, especially when I get behind in counts or it’s a tight inning. I know I can trust her to catch the ball and work the corners. She keeps me calm.”

Though Richey had put up eye-popping numbers, she wasn’t sure where she’d play college softball.

That changed during a travel tournament in the south last year when she was discovered by King University, a Division II school in Bristol, Tenn.

“They kind of found me,” Richey said. “There were some other schools from their conference that were talking to me too, but they felt like the best fit for me.”

The coaches at King University seem to have uncovered a hidden gem.

But before Richey heads to college she’d love to add another WPIAL gold medal to her collection and cap her career as a state champion.