Jilyen Poullard still feels like this isn’t real life, as if she’s floating through a dream. Sitting in the lobby of the Oklahoma State softball clubhouse, the senior outfielder exudes thankfulness. Thankful for the opportunity she was given to play at a national powerhouse. Thankful of her newfound Cowgirl family. Thankful that she didn’t hang up her cleats in the winter of 2023, even when the coach at her former school, McNeese State University, took the joy of the game from her.
Poullard’s leadoff hitting, defensive athleticism and energy have been requisites for the No. 2 Cowgirls in her lone season in Stillwater. She’s embraced the energizer-bunny role for a team that craved a spark.
That spark was almost taken away by a grim tenure at McNeese, where she felt degraded by a coach who nearly pushed her to walk away from softball. “Honestly, it took me years to realize the difference between blatant disrespect and coaching,” Poullard said. “… I still can’t believe it, because I never really saw myself making it away from there. And so to be here every day, it’s just like a completely new life, and I could not possibly be more blessed.”
Jilyen threw too fast for 3- or 4-year-old girls. In wee ball, where Jilyen played shortstop and third base, most girls her age couldn’t prepare for a ball to be fired across the diamond.“They would make her throw it to make it bounce to the first baseman so that it wouldn’t come full throttle straight at a 3 or 4-year-old kid that’s trying to catch the ball,” said Marcella Poullard, Jilyen’s mother.
But it made sense; Jilyen grew up around softball fields. Her older sister, Braylynn Poullard Spikes, played, meaning Jilyen spent her weekends at the ballpark, even if she wasn’t on the field.
And when Jilyen wasn’t grabbing attention on the diamond, she’d try and capture it elsewhere — it was the younger sibling in her, always wanting to stick out.
“Everybody’s there to watch the game, but her and my youngest daughter wanted everybody to watch them play,” said Mister Edwards, one of Jilyen’s former travel ball coaches. “So they were in the stands, behind the dugout, under the dugout, on top of the dugout, doing whatever they can do to get as much attention as they could.”
This happened a lot in the Poullard house. Jilyen called Poullard Spikes — the lowkey and four years older sister — the “angel child,” who rarely got into trouble compared to her little sister. The family calls them polar opposites. It was hard for Jilyen to learn from Poullard Spikes’ mistakes because she made so few. So Jilyen “took a lot of the heat” for the way she would “test the limits,” Poullard Spikes said.