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QuickTake:
The Ducks’ senior slugger has found comfort in Eugene, both as one of the Big Ten’s top hitters and as a budding tattoo artist learning that failure is part of the process.
Three months into the college softball season, it’s clear that Elon Butler is comfortable in her new home.
The Oregon senior utility player leads the Ducks in just about every offensive category — .407 average, 16 home runs, 17 doubles, 56 RBIs — and has the Ducks within one strong weekend at UCLA of taking control of their postseason hosting path.
Still, Butler admits she’s been a bit nervous lately. For as confident as she is after more than 500 career trips to the plate, her new hobby has her feeling like she’s stepping into the box for the first time again as a freshman.
Because in softball, it’s OK to fail. Tattooing, however, carries a little more risk.
“The first one I did I tried to play it off like I wasn’t that nervous, but I was,” Butler said. “It’s kind of like the same feeling as softball. In hitting, you have to be very precise, but also like loose and free-thinking. It’s all about finding that balance.”
Butler has certainly found that in Eugene.
She grew up in the Bay Area, first as a baseball fan. Butler remembers taking BART rides to the Oakland Coliseum to watch A’s games, then going all-in on the San Francisco Giants during the Tim Lincecum and Buster Posey years. She excelled in softball, got a scholarship close to home at Cal, then went about doing what she thought she was supposed to do.
While Butler excelled on the diamond — she hit .328 in 168 games over three years with the Bears — things didn’t feel right off the diamond.
“I thought I was going to be a biomechanical engineer,” Butler said. “I thought I was going to be one of those Berkeley sweats that thought they were going to do this and that. Then I quickly realized I wasn’t going to be able to do that and play softball. It just wasn’t working for me. I was suffering. I was crying every day trying to finish my homework.
“I love the Bay Area so much. It’s such a beautiful place. But I just felt like it was time for me to move on. It was really stressful and that showed up on the field.”
When Butler entered the transfer portal and chose to move north, she said the first thing she did when she got to Oregon was get her priorities straight.
She asked herself: What do I love to do?
Softball was one of those things. The other was drawing.
She’s always been a doodler, she said. Butler remembers spending summers coloring workbooks with her mom, falling in love with Bob Ross painting videos and finding inspiration from everything from the way an album cover looked to the way a song made her feel.
Creating was Butler’s way to decompress, she said. And while there are definitely future avenues for her in professional softball, since arriving in Eugene she’s set to work on what comes after that.
It began with the purchase of a tattoo machine last summer.
“I was sitting in my room, and I was like, ‘What if I full send this?’” Butler said. “And that’s what I’ve been doing since.”
Butler began with drawings. That progressed to practicing on fake skin, which then led her to the nerve-wracking moment when she first put ink on real skin.
“A couple of people have let me tat’ them now,” she said. “Shoutout to them, because I’m just starting my dream, and it’s a scary thing to do if you’re a beginner.”
Butler knows tattoos are permanent: She has three of her own, including one she tattooed herself for the first time on her left hand earlier this week.
Her impact with the Ducks is going to last a while, too.
The No. 15 Ducks are 38-10 and 18-3 in Big Ten play heading into this weekend’s regular season finale at No. 6 UCLA. A series win wouldn’t just likely clinch a postseason Regional round at Jane Sanders Stadium — it would put them in contention to host the Super Regional round as well in Eugene.
That would be a boon for an Oregon team trying to reach the Women’s College World Series for a second consecutive year — and win it for the first time in program history. It would also be huge for Butler, who never really expected to be — or find her true self — in Eugene.
“I like the way everyone really rallies around Oregon, but not in a way where it feels like Oregon is everything. You can get away. You can have your own personal life and just be surrounded by this immense community of people that just really love this school,” she said. “I’m trying to get my first tattooing apprenticeship this summer. It’s something that people don’t really expect from me.
“It’s like softball. You fail a lot more times than you’re going to succeed. It might not look good, but the more you keep on doing it, the better you get.”
