A softball swings out from Jolene Henderson’s hand, thumping into Lindsey Ziegenhirt’s mitt for what seems the millionth time.

On second thought, a million feels conservative. Might be closer to a billion.

“Probably a quadrillion,” Lindsey guesses. “A googol.”

It gets hard to keep track after 11 years, which is about how long the pitcher and catcher have been together. Eleven years that stretch back to when their teams were still called the Teal Tigers and the Purple Stardust, battery back to when Lindsey’s mom still rewarded their in-game achievements with charm necklaces.

When the Cal softball team landed the duo to lead what was the No. 3 recruiting class in the nation, it didn’t just gain a pair of All-Americans-players who reached their CIF section championships every year of their careers at Sacramento’s Sheldon High.

It added a sony-vgp-bps9-b.htm”>battery which came ready with the rare chemistry that can only be developed after years and years of playing with each other.

When the catcher acts as a sort of on-field pitching coach-part psychologist, part strategist-communication across the 43 feet between them is absolutely essential.

“Lindsey knows what I’m gonna do before I do it,” Jolene says. “She’s gonna know what I want to throw. If something that I do is wrong, she’ll help me with it and vice versa.”

They first met when they were seven. Born into softball families, neither had much of a say in which sport they picked.

Lindsey’s mother, Laura, played college ball and coached their rec ball and ASA teams. She ended up at catcher because her older sister threw too hard-and often too wildly-to risk having other rec league girls behind the plate.

Jolene moved to the mound after she refused to pay attention in the outfield, opting to play with the grass instead of the ball.

The two got better quickly. Once they were 10, they moved up two divisions. By the time they were 15, they were playing with the 18-and-unders. Entering high school, they could already keep up with college-bound seniors.

“It was just exciting to watch,” Sheldon High coach Mary Jo Truesdale recalls. “To see Lindsey be able to hit the ball not just over the fence, but over the scoreboard and the second fence is pretty phenomenal. To watch Jolene just put batters down over and over again, and them not being able to come close to hitting what she was able to throw.

“I think from the very beginning you could just sense how special they were.”

The time spent together on the field resulted in a close friendship off it. From winning an ASA national title with the Lady Magic club team to spending $3,000 on designer jeans, they’ve more than figured out each others highs and lows. The pair thinks of each other as sisters-so much so that Danielle, Jolene’s Cal-bound younger sister, also thinks of Lindsey as family.

“We were always Jolene and Lindsey, pitcher and catcher, Cal battery mate combo,” Lindsey says. “If they interviewed one, they interviewed the other. If one person’s on the news, it was because, ‘You and Jolene did it together.’ We signed together on TV.”

It was a signing that had been in the works since they were sophomores. The Pac-10 is consistently the top conference in the sport, and Cal’s close-to-home location made it an easy choice for a pair that knew it wanted to stay together.

Jolene verballed when she was just a freshman, with Lindsey following less than a year later. Just as they often were on the field, the two were ahead of the curve, committing before their older teammates as part of an early recruitment trend.

Now roommates in their Clark Kerr suite, fit seamlessly into a Bears squad looking to return to the Women’s College World Series for the first time since 2005.

Lindsey-tagged as the “Big Hurt” in a nod to the slugger Frank Thomas of Chicago White Sox fame-leads the Bears with 24 RBI, and is behind only U.S. National Team alternate Valerie Arioto with four home runs and a .729 slugging percentage.

Jolene, meanwhile, has notched six wins with a team-low 0.81 ERA.

“I don’t feel like the (college) players have that much of a physical advantage over us,” she says. “It’s more like a mental thing because they’re already there … We stopped to think about it and like, legit think about it-we played with some of these players before … It’s not as big as a jump as people say it is.”

No one’s saying that anymore. Twenty games in Cal uniforms have already made the campus feel like home for the duo. They’ve even switched out their nine-year-old handshake-one that ended with a sizzling fingertip on the other’s shoulder-for the “bear claw,” a sort of interlocking high-five.

What little nervousness they felt had evaporated by the first practice and game of fall ball, a fact that’s clear from their impact this spring.

“I’m calm the whole time,” Jolene says. “Lindsey’s always calm behind the plate. We’re like relaxed kind of players. Relaxed intensity, though. We’re super intense, but we just look confident in what we’re doing.”

It’s a swagger, as Lindsey calls it, and it still has four seasons left to grow.