In 23 years of coaching Niceville softball, Danny Hensley has had his share of elite pitchers. One of the best was Kayla Collins, who led the Lady Eagles to a state appearance before going on to pitch at Florida State and Jacksonville State.

When Hensley talks about Chloe Bailey, he puts her right there alongside Collins, and maybe a step ahead.

• “Talent-wise, she is certainly in the top two,” Hensley said. “Her and Kayla Collins were both our elite pitchers. But Chloe’s right there with her…and maybe even more.”

Bailey, a junior and South Alabama commit, just finished a season that backed up every word. She went 20-7 with a 1.38 ERA and 245 strikeouts in 172.1 innings pitched, throwing three no-hitters, including a perfect game in the district championship against Gulf Breeze, while holding opposing hitters to a .163 batting average. At the plate, she hit .369 with six home runs, 33 RBIs and a 1.025 OPS. She helped lead Niceville to a 24-8 record and a second consecutive trip to the Class 5A state championship game.

Over three varsity seasons, Bailey has compiled 650 career strikeouts, a 1.29 ERA, 34 wins and a .332 career batting average with 11 home runs and 64 RBIs.

The numbers alone would be enough to define a 3-year career. But what defined Bailey’s junior season was what she was willing to push through to put them up.

Bailey dealt with nagging foot injuries for stretches of the season, pitching through pain on days when her body wasn’t cooperating. Then, before Niceville’s regional final against Chiles, a win-or-go-home game with a Final Four berth on the line, she suffered an allergic reaction that covered her entire body in hives.

She pitched anyway.

• “My entire body, head to toe, was full of hives, and I believe that just shows how much I love the team and how bad I wanted it,” Bailey said. “I knew they had my back, and all I wanted was just to go out there, pitch as best as I could, no matter how bad I was hurting or anything, and just gave them my all.”

Niceville won that game in eight innings.

Hensley said Bailey’s ability to endure a workload like that, back-to-back games deep into the postseason and heavy innings down the stretch, comes down to how she prepares when no one is watching.

“When we’re in the weight room, she’s nothing but business in there from the time the bell rings until it’s over,” Hensley said. “Same thing with the speed training. It doesn’t start there. She goes to her own training, hits the gym afterwards and before. She’s just putting in tons and tons of work.”

That preparation showed most clearly during an eight-game winning streak from April 22 through the state semifinal, a stretch in which Bailey posted zeroes on the scoreboard in nearly every outing. It included the perfect game against Gulf Breeze, where she retired all 21 batters she faced with 11 strikeouts and zero walks. She followed that with a 13-strikeout no-hitter against Fleming Island in the regional quarterfinal, then struck out 16 in a 6-3 win over Gulf Breeze in the regional semifinal.

In the state semifinal against Braden River, Bailey clinched Niceville’s spot in the championship game by freezing the final batter with a called third strike.

• “I just felt really good about that pitch, and I knew I was going to get her,” Bailey said. “I had been ready for this moment. I just prepared myself really well for it.”

As for the perfect game, Bailey said she didn’t even realize what was happening until it was over.

“I was kind of caught by surprise with my perfect game,” she said. “I knew I was throwing a no-hitter to Fleming, but I had no idea I was throwing a perfect game to Gulf Breeze.”

What often gets overlooked in Bailey’s game is what she does at the plate. Hensley bats her in the three-hole, and her offensive production has climbed every season, from a .255 batting average as a freshman to .330 as a sophomore to .369 as a junior, with her home run total jumping from zero to five to six.

“That’s one of the things that probably gets underrated a lot for her. She doesn’t get enough credit for it,” Hensley said. “The pitching position usually carries so much stress with it that normally pitchers are not usually good hitters because there’s a mental drain from being out there in the circle. But she’s one of those unique people that she likes to hit, and she’s been back-to-back years one of our top hitters and top RBIs.”

Bailey doesn’t overthink the offensive side of her game.

“My main goal is just keep the team on the board, get runs, and then on pitching it’s just keep the other team from scoring,” she said. “I don’t like to stress myself out about hitting.”

Still, she admitted she genuinely enjoys being in the batter’s box.

• “It’s really fun, especially when you get a really good hit and it just feels good off the bat,” she said. “Just being in the lineup, it’s just a good feeling overall.”

None of it works, though, without the person behind the plate. Bailey and catcher Molly Mayfield have been a battery for years, and the chemistry between them is something Bailey doesn’t take for granted.

“Molly’s like my best friend,” Bailey said. “She’s been my catcher for years, and we have such good chemistry. She knows my pitches well. She’s a great catcher, and she frames so well.”

When Mayfield missed time early in the season with an injury, Bailey had to adjust to a new catcher, something she said was difficult. But the moment Mayfield returned, everything clicked back into place.

• “Once Molly came back, me and her just clicked immediately,” Bailey said. “She just knows me very well and I’m just so grateful to have her.”

Bailey grew up in Niceville, but her family’s roots stretch across the area. Her mother went to Freeport. Her father went to Baker. Her stepfather, a military kid who moved around when he was young, went to Choctaw. She’s grown up here, and wearing a Niceville jersey carries weight for her.

“I’ve lived here my whole life, so playing for my hometown is just really meaningful, and I love it,” she said.

Before committing fully to softball, Bailey played volleyball from sixth grade through her sophomore year. Walking away from a sport she’d played for that long wasn’t easy.

• “It was a really hard decision because I had played volleyball since sixth grade,” she said. “I had stopped playing this year because I had made a decision just to commit to softball, and softball was what I wanted to do. It was a hard decision, but it was for the best.”

Growing up, Bailey looked up to college pitchers she watched from a distance, studying their mechanics and their competitiveness. She wanted to be them. Now she’s preparing to join their ranks at South Alabama, where the campus, the coaching staff and the culture won her over.

“When I went to South, everything was just amazing. All the coaches, the coaching staff are just amazing. They’re very nice, very welcoming, and their campus is beautiful,” Bailey said. “When I went on my other visits, it just wasn’t like South.”

She’s particularly drawn to the relationship between the coaching staff, noting that the pitching coach played for the head coach.

“I just know there’s a bunch of good chemistry between all the coaches,” she said. “I’m most looking forward to really just trying to make the program even better, helping them get more wins.”

Back at Niceville, Hensley said the thing most people don’t see about Bailey is what she’s like when the game is over and the intensity fades.

• “Out there on the circle and on the field, a lot of times I think she has that image of being a warrior, and she is,” Hensley said. “But when it comes right down to it and when we’re in the dugout, she’s hanging out with other kids. She’s probably got the biggest heart and is one of the kindest kids on the team.”

That leadership, Hensley said, is less about words and more about what the rest of the team sees every day.

“The rest of the kids see how she’s attacking it, and if she’s one of the top players on the team working out like that, it encourages them to get on board with her,” he said. “It’s paid huge benefits for our team and made coaching a lot easier for me, because it puts me in a situation where I’m not having to get after them nearly as much to go hard when she’s setting that standard.”

Hensley first saw it during Bailey’s freshman year, when it didn’t take long for him to realize the Lady Eagles had something special. By then, she was already logging 10 to 12 strikeouts per game against top competition.

“She obviously has great velocity, but she works hard on spinning the ball and hitting her locations and not just being a hard thrower, but being a pitcher,” Hensley said. “Somebody that can change speeds and locations and direction. She’s worked hard to become one of the best spinners, by far, in the South.”

Niceville’s season ended with a 6-0 loss to Winter Springs in the state championship, the same team that beat them in the title game a year ago. But Bailey isn’t dwelling on the outcome. She has one year left, and the hunger that drove this season hasn’t gone away.

• “We were very hungry (and humble) since the previous year we had lost, and we really wanted it bad this year,” Bailey said. “Unfortunately it didn’t turn out how we wanted, but we have one more year, and I believe that we’re going to get it next year.”

Her goals for senior year go beyond the scoreboard. She wants to improve her numbers, welcome the incoming freshmen and help build the next version of this team. But when asked what advice she’d give to a younger player in the area watching her the same way she once watched the pitchers she admired, Bailey brought it back to the basics.

“Work as hard as you can. Even if you aren’t first, that doesn’t mean anything. If you aren’t the best, that doesn’t mean you’re not good. You just have to put the work in,” she said. “Play loose, don’t be tight. And have fun. Having fun is the most important part. You can’t play a sport and not have fun because then it just doesn’t mean anything.”