After a softball game about a year ago, then-12-year-old Addison Putz made her way directly to the back row of her mother Kelsey’s car, preemptively anticipating her mother’s wrath.
Kelsey was Addison’s softball coach, and Addison hadn’t played as well as she’d hoped. After such a difficult game, her fear of what her mother would say is a fairly common one for young athletes.
But years earlier, Addison’s older sister, now-Michigan freshman first baseman Lauren Putz had a vastly different reaction during her time under Kelsey’s tutelage. She wasn’t afraid of her mother’s reactions, and instead, took each comment and adapted her game off it.
“She’s just chill,” Kelsey told The Michigan Daily. “… It was hard to be a coach’s kid. … She just took a lot of lumps from me, whether I was mad at her or whether I was mad at other kids on the team. And she is the type of kid who can just sit in the front seat — you see these memes now on Instagram, with the parents yelling at the kids — and she could just take it. She just sat there and never tried to argue.”
Lauren’s ability to maintain a level head on and off the field in the face of parental frustration differentiated her not just from Addison, but from other children in her position. It was a trait reflective of her general propensity to go with the flow in the face of the great expectations that come with being a highly touted recruit born to Michigan athletics icons.
“There was always some frustration on my end,” Kelsey said. “And you just kind of expect your kids to know what they’re doing, she didn’t always. But I think I had a really high standard, and I never really lowered my standard, and I would just constantly try to teach and explain things to her and and to my team.”
Being coached by Kelsey was perhaps the first time that the storied legacy of the Putz family, and the expectations of greatness that accompanied it, truly confronted Lauren head-on. But in accordance with Lauren’s carefree personality, she simply took her mother’s tough-love approach to coaching as an opportunity to learn about the importance of consistent improvement.
That easygoing nature and calm personality is a trait that has been Lauren’s biggest asset in her journey to carving out a name for herself as a Wolverine — despite only being in her first season.
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For the Putz family, the Wilpon Baseball and Softball Complex at Michigan is synonymous with some of the best years of their lives.
Kelsey, a California native, played second base for the Michigan softball team from 1999-2002, earning two NFCA All-American nods. Her time with the Wolverines fell during the 38-year reign of legendary coach Carol Hutchins, with current Michigan coach Bonnie Tholl as an assistant.
During her time at Michigan, Kelsey met her husband J.J., a Michigander who shared her athletic pedigree. J.J. pitched for the Wolverines baseball team from 1996-1999, eventually parlaying his collegiate career into a successful 12-year stint in MLB, split across four different teams. The pinnacle of his professional baseball career, though, was an MLB All-Star selection in 2007 that he earned while playing for the Seattle Mariners.
Although Kelsey and J.J. eventually settled in Arizona, thousands of miles from Ann Arbor, their ties to Michigan far outlast the time they each spent at the university. J.J. and Kelsey each maintained relationships with the people who made their experiences as Wolverines, with Kelsey even immediately telling Tholl about her eventual pregnancy with Lauren and her twin sister, Kaelyn.
“Besides her own husband, I was the second person that Kelsey called to tell me that they were having a ‘double-play combination,’ ” Tholl told The Daily. “Which meant that they were having twins. That was pretty cool.”
Despite being such a great distance from Michigan, the Putz family still maintained close ties with the programs that shaped them. Hutchins and Tholl both watched the girls grow up, and J.J.’s old baseball teammates were frequent visitors to the Putz household. Being raised by two Michigan greats set expectations high for all of the Putz kids. But those expectations were amplified for Lauren and Kaelyn as the oldest of the four siblings and the first to begin their athletic careers.
As twins, the two naturally played sports together, like volleyball and softball, but also forged their own unique identities. Kaelyn never quite resonated with softball, drifting towards a volleyball career. Lauren followed in her mother’s footsteps while developing her own connection to the sport, as her outgoing and bubbly nature allowed her to build ties with her teammates and a love for the game.
Lauren’s friendliness and “carefree” disposition, as her father described, was just another way in which her easy-going personality shone through. By not letting the weight of expectations to emulate her parents or their illustrious friends overpower her, Lauren took it all in stride and lived in the present while inching closer to her future in softball.
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Lauren continued to play both softball and volleyball until middle school. But eventually softball won her over. And the community of the sport was ingrained from the get-go.
Her first coach was, fittingly, her mother, who coached her at the under-12 and under-14 levels. As a former All-American, Kelsey naturally had lofty expectations for her players, which proved to be an early test for a young Lauren.
And the strength of the softball community was even more evident when Lauren continued her softball career beyond her mom’s coaching with the Arizona Storm, coached by Rick Beach, a friend of Kelsey’s from her own travel ball club.
During her time with the Storm, Lauren formed part of a cohort that included other highly touted prospects, such as UCLA right-hander Kaitlyn Terry, Florida infielder Rylee Holtorf, Alabama right-hander Jocelyn Briski and LSU utility player Sierra Daniel. With the litany of talent on the team, the group went on to achieve a third-place PGF national finish in 2023.
At this point, the idea that Lauren was capable of great things within the sport was more than a product of her bloodline, and was also of the caliber of her teammates. But once again, she didn’t balk at the challenge but rather rose to it. In keeping with her carefree nature, she shrugged off the pressure and embraced the opportunity, capturing a 2023 PGF All-American nod for her efforts in securing the third-place finish.
“She was very coachable,” Beach told The Daily. “She had a great softball IQ coming from a baseball and softball family. You could tell her something, and she would pick up on it immediately.”
In that coachability and willingness to learn, Lauren once more demonstrated the same ease that had permeated her life so far. Not intimidated by the prospect of playing with other equally talented girls, Lauren took yet another opportunity to gain experience at a high level.
Lauren applied her coachability and the lessons she learned from both her mother and the Storm to an immensely successful four years at Xavier College Preparatory. Posting a career slash line of .559/.679/1.223, to go with 165 hits, 187 runs, 122 RBI and 42 homers, she led her team to three state championships in four years, racked up conference, regional and state player of the year accolades, and topped off her career by being ranked as Extra Innings Softball’s No. 13 prospect in 2024.
By now, the expectations for Lauren were dizzyingly high. But it wasn’t because of who her parents or her teammates were, but rather, who she was — unfazed by pressure, Lauren excelled throughout her young career and set her own expectations.
As her college career loomed in the near future, it seemed, given her lineage, that there was only one real option. But Lauren still explored schools other than Michigan, with Northwestern, Arizona State, Minnesota and Texas A&M all standing out as prospective choices.
In the end, though, she, like her parents, was called to Wilpon Baseball and Softball Complex – a place it seemed she was always fated to step foot.
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Lauren has only been a starter for the Wolverines for two months, yet she already has a catchphrase associated with her: “Putz Power.”
Scroll through the official Michigan Softball X account, and you’ll see the phrase pop up quite a few times. It’s what they tweet out every time she hits a home run. And it appears pretty often, because she hits home runs pretty often. In fact, she currently has 11, the second-most of anyone on the team.
Though power at the plate has clearly been Lauren’s biggest tool thus far, it’s certainly not the only one in her toolbox, as she can lay claim to a slash line of .414/.508/.820, alongside 46 hits and 34 RBIs. It’s a stat line indicative of a player with a well-rounded bat, who can consistently make contact for average and generate scoring plays and momentum.
“I’ve always been a line-drive hitter,” Lauren told The Daily. “So I just try to keep that in mind and not try to do too much by hitting the home run every time, which definitely helps me to not be as stressed and looser in the box.”
The stakes have never been higher for Lauren than they have this season — a highly touted recruit, playing for the alma mater of both her parents and playing under a coach who’s known her family her whole life.
But those stakes haven’t fazed her in the slightest, much like very little else has throughout her life. Her presence in the batter’s box fits perfectly with the demeanor she’s employed all her life — easy going, upbeat, carefree and refusing to dwell heavily on setbacks, instead using them as learning experiences. And just as that temperament led Lauren to wear the maize and blue, it’s enabled her to thrive in it, as she’s emerged as among the Wolverines’ most potent offensive sparks so far.
“I hate when people say that it’s surreal,” J.J. told The Daily. “But it really is pretty crazy and really, really cool to see one of your kids at your alma mater doing what she loves, following in her mom’s footsteps.”
By excelling for Michigan, Lauren is living her parents’ dream. But perhaps more importantly, she’s living her own dream, a dream that’s the product of meeting the lofty expectations set by both her family’s vaunted achievements and the standards she’s held for herself.
And Lauren’s done far more than meet those expectations — she’s exceeded them, by being herself and by being “chill.”
