Rachel Henks is a second-team selection on the 2017 NAIA All-America Softball Team.

Rachel Henks, a senior pitcher from Lee’s Summit, Mo., is a second-team selection on the 2017 NAIA All-America Softball Team.

Henks, the 2017 Hauff Mid-America Sports/Great Plains Athletic Conference (GPAC) Pitcher of the Year, posted a 34-10 record with a 1.58 earned run average with eight shutouts and one save. Henks had 71 walks and 272 strikeouts and allowed only 175 hits in 265.2 innings pitched while limiting the opposition to a paltry .181 batting average. She completed 30 of her 37 starts.

Henks set a school record with her 34 victories to break the Mustangs’ former single season standard of 33 wins by Whitney McElrath, who went 33-12 in the 2006 campaign. Henks ranked second nationally in the NAIA with her 34 victories and third with her 272 strikeouts and 265.2 innings pitched. The 272 strikeouts was the second highest single-season total in Morningside history.

She twirled an abbreviated five-inning no-hitter with 10 strikeouts in her first start of the season when the Mustangs opened the campaign with an 8-0 victory against Tabor College on Feb. 10 at the Cowtown Classic in Fort Worth, Tex. Henks also pitched a six-inning no-hitter with eight strikeouts in an 8-0 triumph against city rival Briar Cliff University on April 3 and a five-inning no-hitter with eight strikeouts in an 8-0 win against Midland University on April 29.

Henks had six double figure strikeout performances and fanned a season’s high 11 batters in a 13-5 six-inning win against Tabor on March 10 in the McPherson College Tournament in McPherson, Kan. She allowed three hits or less in 12 of her 37 starts.

Henks joined the Mustangs for the 2016 season as a transfer from Augustana University. She compiled a 56-15 record with a 1.76 earned run average and struck out 447 batters in 425.1 innings pitched over her two-year Morningside career.

Morningside posted a 40-12 record and won the GPAC championship with a 17-3 league mark during the 2017 season and competed in the NAIA Softball National Championship tournament for the eighth time in the last nine years.

Click here for the complete 2017 NAIA All-America Softball Team.