Abby Fiessinger, a six-year starter for the Lady Marshals softball team from 2010-2016, should be enjoying her senior season at Carson-Newman University in Jefferson City, Tenn. Like many collegiate student-athletes across the nation, that season was taken away by the COVID-19 pandemic. That final season with teammates…creating the memories that wrap up and put a bow on a four-year career and celebrated for your accomplishments on Senior Day. Closure the athletes of spring will not get.
When Fiessinger graduated from Marshall County High School, she held several records including Highest Season Batting Average, Highest On-Base Percentage, Most Hits in a Season, Most Doubles in a Season, Most RBI’s in a Season and going into her senior year, a batting average of .479. Her outstanding high school career included multiple awards – 2015 Region 1 Player of the Year, 2014 and 2015 All-Region Team selection, 2013, 2014 and 2015 Defense and Offense Awards and a member of the Junior West All-Star Team.
Fiessinger made an immediate impact at Carson-Newman, becoming just the second player in the history of the softball program to earn All-America honors as a second baseman in her freshman season. She hit .398 for the season, the sixth highest in the South Atlantic Conference, hit a team-best 10 home runs, five triples and 72 base hits. Her 18-game hitting streak was the fourth longest in school history that season, tied the single-game school record with two triples on March 27 against Brevard College and went on to finish that game with four hits and seven RBI’s. She recorded 52 runs her freshman season, going on to earn D2CCA All-America, D2CCA All-Region First Team, NFCA All-Region Second Team and All-SAC Honorable Mention.
In her sophomore season, Fiessinger finished 14th in the conference and second on the team with a .382 batting average while recording 66 hits that included 14 doubles, two triples and five home runs. She drove in 23 runs, 20 multi-hit games and had seven multi-RBI efforts on the year. Honors included SAC All-Tournament Team, NFCA All-Region First Team, All-SAC First Team and All-SAC Tournament Team.
Fiessinger finished her junior season as the SAC’s regular season batting champion with a .442 average and finished the year with a .424 average, the 18th best in program history single-season batting average. She was the fourth all time to slug higher than .800 (.818) for a year and tied for 10th for single-game RBI’s with five.
She led the Lady Eagles with 11 home runs and her 15-game hitting streak became the sixth longest in program history. Fiessinger’s batting average stayed above .404 her junior season and her 17 doubles tied for 10th most in a single season at Carson-Newman.
Her honors list was long last season including, two-time SAC Player of the Week, TSWA Player of the Week twice, All-SAC First Team, SAC All-Tournament, Google Cloud CoSIDA Academic All-District, D2CCA Southeast Region Player of the Year, D2CCA All-Region First Team, NFCA All-Region First Team, D2CCA All-America Honorable Mention, NFCA All-America Second Team, Google Cloud CoSIDA Academic All-America First Team and Fast Pitch News All-America Honorable Mention.
Coming into her senior season, Fiessinger was one of 50 named to NFCA National Player of the Year Watch List. Carson-Newman was 14-4 this spring when the season abruptly ended and 4-0 in conference play. Through the first 18 games, her batting average was .414 with 25 RBIs and two home runs. In February she moved to fourth all-time on Carson-Newman’s home run list and earned Player of the Game honors against Tusculum on March 7.
She was one of four seniors who together combined for two conference tournament titles, a regular season conference championship and three trips to the NCAA tournament. In a Twitter post in March, Fiessinger said “I will never be able to describe the emotional heartbreak.”
