Submitted photo: Fort Dodge pitcher Jalen Adams poses with her father, Dan, and mother, Andi, following Monday’s victory over Ankeny Centennial — the 100th of the Dodger senior’s spectacular softball career.

The list of Iowa’s career 100-game high school softball winners appears lengthy at first blush.

The names appear annually in the state tournament program. Full-page spread, small type, sharing space as a seven-decade trip down memory lane for our state’s all-time great pitchers.

Fort Dodge’s Jalen Adams joined that elite group on Monday, picking up career victory No. 100 with a win at Ankeny Centennial. Adams joins the 350 hurlers before her, including ex-Dodger standout and 2000 FDSH graduate Suzanne Stripling — the only other player in school history to reach the mark.

We have a general appreciation for the rarity of this feat, but it tends to get lost in modern translation. A glance at the chart makes it seem impressive, but not necessarily unique.

False.

In 2022, Adams reaching the century mark doesn’t just make her an endangered species at the Class 5A level. It means she’s a unicorn.

Only 68 Iowa high school athletes total have reached 100 victories since the year 2000, and of those, just 18 have come since 2010. The driving factor behind the dip was the 2008 rule change, which cut the maximum number of allowed regular-season games from 50 to 40.

Pitchers are also paced out and protected more now, though; the days of making appearances in both sides of a varsity doubleheader are long gone.

It’s especially uncommon at the large-class level today, where teams are regularly playing twinbills. From the CIML, only Haley Towers of Johnston — who graduated in 2016 — hit the triple-digit plateau in the last 18 years. Des Moines Lincoln legend Lisa Birocci accumulated 143 victories, but graduated in 2001 and was used much more frequently under the old 50-game format. The same goes for Indianola’s Callie Hohneke (106 wins, Class of 2004).

Now, that current millennium trio has company with Adams.

I looked up a handful of elite large-class pitchers from recent memory to compare. Ankeny’s Shayla Starkenburg had 75 wins before becoming a starter at the University of Iowa. Multi-time first team all-stater Sarah Schaefer of Waukee, who had a solid collegiate career at the University of Michigan, recorded 72 victories for the Warriors. Kaylin Kinney, the Cedar Rapids Kennedy star who beat Adams and shut down the Dodgers in the 2020 state championship matchup, tallied 67.

Amanda Zust, who led Des Moines East to the state crown in 2006, had 66. Dowling’s Claudia Farrell, another state champ, finished with 61. Allison Doocy of Ankeny, a recently-graduated Iowa Hawkeye standout hurler, closed with 55. So did Mackenzie Ward, a dominant ace at West Des Moines Valley.

These are some of the state’s biggest names and brightest stars. Yet they didn’t even flirt with 100. Adams stared the number down and then blew it away.

From the time she arrived in her mother’s program as a precocious eighth grader, Adams was ready. She went 19-3 before ever setting foot on FDSH’s campus in 2018. A 24-3 mark followed as a freshman, then 20-2 as a sophomore, 25-1 during her junior campaign, and 12-3 so far with two full weeks of regular-season games still to come as a senior.

Adams hasn’t done it alone. The defense behind her has been remarkably steady; after allowing 27 unearned runs out of 115 total runs in her first two years — not a bad ratio by any stretch of the imagination — she’s given up just 10 total unearned runs of the 48 in the last three seasons.

Both Jalen and Andi Adams will be the first to insist there is team ownership of an individual statistic like this. The awards and recognition publicly go to the pitcher, but the credit should absolutely be cumulative. Adams is a tireless worker and a gifted softball player, without question. This 100 is owned, however — collectively — by the program.

Enjoy it, Dodger fans. I would be stunned if we ever see something like this again — not just at Fort Dodge, but in the large-class ranks period. This has been a master class in dominance, consistency and longevity.

Jalen Adams may come from a new era of pitchers, but at her core, she’s as old school as it gets.

Eric Pratt is Sports Editor at The Messenger. Contact him via email at sports@messengernews.net, or on Twitter @ByEricPratt