STANWOOD — When Addi Anderson stranded runners on third base in five different innings to help Stanwood softball beat Sedro-Woolley 2-1 in 10 innings to claim the District 1 3A Championship on May 15, her father, Keith, may have been more happy than she was.
“I was super excited that I got to share that experience with him,” Anderson said. “He’s in the dugout cheering as loud as he can. I’ve always watched him at home, watching football and seeing how excited he gets watching, like, Seahawks games and stuff.
“But seeing him, like, how excited he was when I struck out that last girl to win the game. … He was so excited and it just made my heart so happy.”
After spending her whole life in Anchorage, Alaska while Keith coached for the AK Firecrackers softball club, Anderson and her family moved to Washington ahead of her freshman year. She would attend the same high school where Keith graduated in 1998. By the time Anderson entered her sophomore season and took the reins as the team’s top pitcher, Keith joined the Stanwood coaching staff.
For the first time, father and daughter would share the same dugout. In Keith’s eyes, it didn’t matter if it was a 10-inning nail-biter or a blowout. Any day he got to watch her in the circle was a good one.
“When she gets in that zone and she’s on the circle, and she got that look on her face,” Keith said. “I can sit back and just (be) like, ‘Ok, this is gonna be fun.’”
And fun it was. Anderson sported a 1.32 ERA and 0.85 WHIP with 11 wins and 157 strikeouts over 111 innings (9.9 per seven innings). On top of the district championship and first team All-Wesco selection, Anderson was named The Herald’s All-Area Softball Pitcher of the Year.
Ironically, just two years ago, Anderson didn’t know much about the ‘area’ at all.
Growing up in Anchorage as part of a softball family — where at 12 years old she could keep up with the 18U players that Keith coached — Anderson was used to traveling great distances for high-level tournaments. She played in California, Arizona, Hawaii and even as far away as Maryland, but it was always temporary.
So when she received a text from Keith in the final weeks of eighth grade during lunch that the family was moving to Washington, it was a mix of emotions. The first thing that popped into Anderson’s mind was excitement.
For as much travel as she experienced, she had never lived in another state before, and the idea of getting to live in a new place and meet new people appealed to her. In Stanwood, she would also be closer to her grandparents, who live on Camano Island. Another positive.
Then her friends — eating lunch next to her — brought up that her move would mean they wouldn’t get to experience high school together. The excitement turned into sadness.
To add onto the bittersweet feelings, she was hit with complete culture shock by the time she arrived in Stanwood.
“My first day, I was wearing Jordans, jeans and a crop top or something, and everybody was wearing cowboy boots and boot-cut jeans,” Anderson recalled. “I was like, ‘Dad, everybody here is, like, farm people. I didn’t know this.’”
Keith replied: “Oh yeah, I probably should have told you that.”
But Anderson quickly found her way. She joined the girls volleyball team as a freshman in the fall with the primary goal of making friends, and she met her future softball teammate Jemma Lopez. From there, Anderson got introduced to Jemma’s sister, Rubi, and by the time softball season came around in the spring, she already knew most of her teammates.
She also became accustomed to being in farm country.
“I actually have started to like looking at all the horses and cows, and I love seeing cows driving down the road and stuff,” Anderson said.
Anderson started her career at Stanwood with fewer opportunities to pitch with then-senior Eliot McDonald ahead of her on the depth chart. The coaching staff knew right away she could handle a bigger workload, but wanted to ease her in without as much pressure on her.
In the eyes of assistant coach Joel Almanza, Anderson was already the best pitcher on the team.
“The innings that she did pitch, she was dominant,” Almanza said. “It wasn’t like it was just a flip of a switch where she wasn’t a dominant player and then all of a sudden she became that. I think she’s been working hard at this for many, many years.”
Anderson believed her style — pitching fast with good location — paired well with McDonald’s slower speed that had more movement, and by the time McDonald graduated and Anderson stepped in as the top pitcher for her sophomore season, she had grown even more in the circle.
After finishing atop Wesco North 3A/2A and winning the district tournament, the Spartans earned the top seed in the 3A State Tournament, but they were shocked in a 5-4 quarterfinal loss to No. 8 Garfield on May 23. It was a disappointing finish for a team set to lose top offensive players Rubi Lopez and Reagan Ryan, among others, to graduation, but Anderson has hope the incoming freshman class can build off the progress of the 2025 team.
Anderson got back to training at D-BAT Skagit Valley shortly after the season ended, and as she was throwing pitches, a girl in the batting cage next to her offered to catch for her. Anderson was almost done for the day, but happily agreed.
The two got to talking when the other girl — Madelina Archer — mentioned she was starting at Stanwood in the fall and planned to join the softball team. In a completely chance meeting, Anderson ran into her potential catcher of the future. The two continued to meet up at D-BAT and started to get on the field a couple times to pitch and hit together.
For Anderson, the work of making the new members of the team feel welcome has already started. The Alaska transplant has turned into an elder stateswoman, and after a stellar sophomore season, Anderson hopes she can build on the team’s success in 2026.
“Since we were losing so many valuable players in spots that we needed them in, we were kind of concerned that we weren’t going to be able to have people fill those spots,” Anderson said. “But I think we’ll be just fine. And I want to accomplish the same things we did this year, but go farther.”
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