Chaos has worked well for Widefield softball. 

Some parents were skeptical in 2024 when Gladiators coach Nick Leonard placed five freshmen on the varsity roster. Nevertheless, the team finished the year with 19 wins, the most in Leonard’s tenure and most in the school’s recorded history on MaxPreps dating back to 2009. 

Last year, as Widefield entered a difficult stretch of road games, Leonard used the mantra of “burn the boats,” a reference to Explorers and conquerors in history who would fully commit to their campaigns by destroying their only way home, effectively embracing whatever chaos may come their way. In 2025, the Glads won 23 games and earned a berth in the 4A state tournament.  

Widefield captured the 4A/3A Colorado Springs Metro League South titles in each season and the most chaotic member of the team earned league MVP honors both times. 

Pitcher Olivia McEwen, who is entering her junior year, earned the nickname “Chaos” for how she steals bases, but it’s emblematic of her confident, go-for-it-all mindset. 

“When I’m running the bases, people call me chaos because I usually tend to create chaos on the base path,” she said. “I have a mentality where it’s like I’m just going to get this base no matter what, if I’m actually going. When I first start, I get a good jump so when I read the ball I can just take off, if it’s in the dirt, if it’s a change-up.”

McEwen led Widefield in stolen bases her freshman season with 12 and again last year with 19.  

She’s adamant that she could have more, but her habit of sliding headfirst is a bit too much chaos for Leonard, who feels the need to protect his pitcher. After all, she led the Glads in nearly every major statistical category last season, including batting average (.556), on-base percentage (.626), home runs (7), runs (48), hits (50), slugging percentage (.989) and triples (4). The pitcher recorded a team-high 160 strikeouts as well, shattering the previous school record of 110 she set in her freshman season.

If Leonard allows her a bit more autonomy in deciding when she can steal bases this season, McEwen believes she’ll conquer that record, too, as well as Widefield’s home run record, which stands at eight. 

McEwen believes the sky is the limit, and the confidence she exudes is one of the reasons she’s become a crucial player on Widefield’s softball team. Confidence is one of four core values the program recognizes alongside grit, purpose and character. Confidence was the key ingredient for the Glads when Leonard first took the job back in 2022.

In his first two seasons, Leonard led Widefield to 14-9 and 13-10 records, putting the program back on the right path after a pair of subpar years. 

“I think the number one thing coming in … I just wanted to immediately let the girls know right away that despite what’s happened in the past years, seasons and in the city and in our league, that we’re good enough to compete with everybody,” Leonard said. “I think some of that belief in themselves was lacking.”

Having caught for McEwen when she was first learning how to pitch back in sixth grade and serving as a teacher to her and her classmates in middle school, Leonard knew that the class of 2028 had a lot of talent and experience playing with each other on club teams entering their high school careers. 

Their talent and confidence were what motivated him to insert them into the varsity lineup.

Their first outing was understandably difficult. Widefield opened the 2024 season against a tough opponent in Pueblo Central. Ultimately, the nerves of playing against 17- and 18-year-old girls as freshmen got the better of McEwen, her classmates and the Glads, resulting in a 10-4 loss. 

But that one experience was all it took. From then on, the class of 2028 understood that Leonard had faith in them and they and the Widefield team as a whole rewarded that faith with one of the best seasons in program history. 

As a result, a community that was once skeptical became believers over the course of a season. 

“The community has really embraced them,” Leonard said. “At first it was like, ‘Who are these young kids coming in? Why are they so confident? Why are my upperclassmen having to sit and watch them play?’ But I really believed that these kids were ready. … And I think as soon as they knew that I believed in them, that I had their back and they had mine within that first season, it was pretty clear by the end that they were the kids who should have been playing.”

The Gladiators rode the wave of continuity into 2025 where they marched to an impressive 8-0 start, dropped two games in a week in mid-September, then rattled off 12 straight wins to enter the postseason. 

“It was the exact same team, except one player,” McEwen said of last year’s team. “I feel like we had chemistry already. We were going off the (previous) season. We had a goal of making it to state and that was in our mind the whole time.”

McEwen’s success in high school is due in part to the time she puts in with her club team, Colorado Altitude Pakenham. 

“Doing club all summer, playing with my friends that I’ve known forever and just the chemistry we have helps me go into high school ball just ready to go,” she said. “I play with one (person) on my high school team and club team, (Madalyn) Mitchell. She also helps me develop and transition from club to high school.”

This upcoming junior year for McEwen and her classmates presents a different challenge. While the class of 2028 has always been leaders for Widefield from a talent standpoint, this year, those players will be challenged to lead in the intangibles as well. 

Fortunately for them, they had good mentors and already put some work into building the next generation of Widefield softball players. 

Much like Leonard trained with her in her middle school years, McEwen has paid it forward by helping him coach at her old stomping grounds at Sproul Junior High School. They’re very familiar with last year’s eighth graders and believe that a talented Class of 2030 will join the team this fall and perhaps contribute much in the way the Class of 2028 did two seasons ago. 

The freshmen’s arrival comes at an opportune time as the Glads graduated five seniors, nearly half the team, last year. But those players left a solid blueprint for how to keep the good times rolling in District 3 this fall. 

During her freshman and sophomore seasons, McEwen kept a good eye on former senior catcher Isabella Monk.

“Bella Monk is definitely (someone) I really look up to,” McEwen said. “She was my other side of the battery and she just had that mentality that I do, that’s just go for it all. She has so much confidence and she’s just an all-around athlete. I feel like I fit in with her so much.”