DENVER – MSU Denver has for decades been a leader in providing equal opportunities for women in intercollegiate athletics.
Today is the 41st installment of a 52-part tribute by Roadrunners Athletics to pioneers and leaders in intercollegiate athletics at MSU Denver. The series coincides with the passage of Title IX.
Each Thursday, a key female figure in Roadrunners athletics history will be recognized.
Today, softball star Kellie Nishikida is featured.
Nishikida was just one of the cavalcade of stars who played softball for the Roadrunners in 2009 and 2010, a wrecking-crew era in which the team was 93-18 overall and 66-9 in regular-season RMAC play. She helped the team to that national championship semifinals as part of the 53-6 team in 2010, and both teams won Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference regular-season and tournament championships before advancing to the NCAA Tournament.
She was the first player in program history to hit a school-record three home runs in a game on Feb. 21, 2009, (it has since been done four other times) and her school-record 39-game hitting streak from Feb. 8 through April 20, 2009, still stands. She batted .370 with seven homers and 49 RBIs while stealing 15 bases in 17 attempts for the 2010 team, following up a 2009 campaign in which she batted .407 with 13 homers and 53 RBIs while stealing eight bases in nine attempts.
Nishikida was All-America second team in 2009. And earned all-region first team honors for Daktronics in 2009 as well as second team honors from Dakotronics in 2010 as well as the NFCA in both 2009 and 2019. She was an All-RMAC first team selection in 2009 and was All-RMAC second team 2010.
She and teammate Amber Roundtree each had 79 hits in 2009, which is still the program's single-season record, while she and teammate Tara Mickelson tied for what was the single-season program record of 140 total bases in 2009 (that mark is now tied for third). Nishikida has the fourth-best batting average in program history at .389. Despite playing only two seasons, she's still ranked 10
th in program history with 127 career runs.
Title IX, the groundbreaking law prohibiting sex-based discrimination at schools that receive funding from the federal government, went into effect just over 50 years ago – on June 23, 1972.
