The intentional walk was the tell. Dejah Mulipola on first, Rylie Boone on second, game tied in the seventh on Family Day — and Carolina decided someone else should decide it.
Jackie Lis had already decided what the pitch would look like.
“I had a feeling they were going to put Dejah on,” Lis said afterward in the Dell Diamond press box. “I was just like, I’m sitting on outside, and I’m gonna drive a ball that way — and if it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. That’s my plan. I’m gonna stick with it.”
It worked. Boone scored. The Texas Volts walked off the Carolina Blaze 4-3 — their second straight walk-off at home — and a rookie who once left a sure thing for a harder one sat next to the veterans she used to watch on television.
Two dreams, one transfer
A year earlier, Lis entered the transfer portal with a short list that was really two dreams: play in the Women’s College World Series, and put herself in position to play professionally. She had already rewritten Southern Illinois’s books across three seasons — a .358 career average there, per Texas Tech Athletics — and still walked away from the comfort of being the best player in the room.
Texas Tech was the opposite of comfort. The Red Raiders signed the nation’s No. 1 transfer class that summer. Lis arrived as one of the NCAA’s active career home-run leaders and still had to earn every inning, per On3’s Red Raider Sports.
She left Lubbock with both dreams checked. In 2026 she hit .415 with 21 home runs and 75 RBI, earned NFCA Third-Team All-America honors, and helped Tech reach the WCWS finals, per Texas Tech Athletics and the Volts’ opening-day roster notes. Then the turnaround got shorter: pack the apartment, storage unit, plane back to Oklahoma City for the AUSL — drafted by Texas in Round 6, parked briefly in the reserve pool, then reserved and kept, per AUSL transaction records.
In the press box on July 11, someone asked what the rookie year had felt like — and whether she could have imagined it a year ago, walking into Tech.
“It’s been unreal to be able to take the field with people that I’ve watched for so long,” Lis said. “I got to watch her win four championships and now I’m sitting next to her doing press. So like, it’s just kind of been unreal.”
Then she said the line that sits under every at-bat since Lubbock.
“Going into Tech, that was one of the reasons I left my last school — I wanted to be able to have a chance to put myself out there to make it to the pros,” Lis said. “I didn’t know this is where I was going to end up and if it was actually a thing. And I took the risk and I’m glad I did.”
Why not Jackie?
Boone had already done her half of the seventh: leadoff single, then the voice from second base when Carolina walked Mulipola.
“Even when I was on second, just telling Jackie, like, why not you?” Boone said. “In my head, I’m thinking, why not Jackie? Go ahead and walk her. Yeah — you gotta deal with this one.”
Lis had fouled off the outside looks she wanted. On the last pitch she got on top of one and sent it where Boone’s speed made the rest of the play a formality.
“When I was seeing those outside pitches, I was just under a few of them,” Lis said. “And then on that last pitch, I was really just trying to get a little bit more on top than the balls I fouled off. And sure enough, did it. And there it went.”
She finished the afternoon 2-for-3 with a walk and the game-winning RBI, per AUSL postgame notes — third base held down since Aminah Vega left for a full-time job outside the league, the kind of move Woodard does not treat as temporary.
“Jackie’s an athlete,” Volts head coach Ricci Woodard said. “She was a shortstop before she went to Tech … From bunts to hard-hit balls to double plays, she’s just done a good job of keeping us in the game.”
Woodard even admitted the recruiting near-miss with a smile: she had tried to get Lis to Texas State once. Lis chose the harder path instead.
Don’t let the moment get too big
The clutch role is not new. Tech put her in those spots. The Volts keep putting her there. The adjustment is the league itself — no soft middle of the order, no pitcher you can coast against for an at-bat.
“It’s really just trusting my preparation,” Lis said. “I got put in that spot a lot at Tech, and I’ve been getting put in it a lot here. So it’s really just trusting my capabilities as a hitter and not letting the moment get too big to where it clouds my performance in the box — and then once I’m in there, taking a deep breath and just trying to get the outcome that my team needs.”
“There’s not a single easy out or easy pitcher in this league,” she added. “You literally can’t take a single pitch off, ever.”
That is the point of the risk she described. Southern Illinois made her a star. Texas Tech made her a World Series finalist and an All-American. The Volts made her the last swing on Family Day — kids on their feet, purple on the grass, a former Saluki shortstop who moved to first at Tech and third in Round Rock because the next job was always the one that asked for more.
She did not know, transferring in, that this is where it would land. She took the risk anyway. On a Saturday in July, with Boone dancing off second and Carolina daring her to finish it, the plan held.
Anthony Rivera, Dell Diamond press box. Stats from the official AUSL box score and postgame notes; Woodard, Boone, and Lis quotes from the July 11 AUSL postgame press conference. College background via Texas Tech Athletics, AUSL roster notes, and On3 / Red Raider Sports.