Kiki Milloy’s NCAA softball legacy: records, leadership and impact

Former Tennessee softball star Kiki Milloy pauses to think after being asked a simple but weighty question: What were some of your most notable NCAA achievements? 

To be fair, the list is long. 

Milloy's record-breaking NCAA softball career 

Her answer starts with numbers — impressive ones. There were the 25 home runs she hit in 2023, leading Division I and setting a program record at Tennessee. There were the 86 runs she scored that season, which also led the nation. 

"I led in something else, but I can't remember what that was," Milloy said, forgetting the 159 total bases she recorded, which also led Division I. 

Then there was Tennessee's 2023 trip to the Women's College World Series — its first since 2015 — where she earned All-Tournament recognition. Not to mention her international experience with Team USA, competing in the 2022 Canada Cup and Japan All-Star Series. 

"I forgot to say All-American," Milloy, who received several All-America honors at Tennessee, said in an interview connected to being named as one of the 2025 NCAA Today's Top 10 awardees. The Today's Top 10 award recognizes former student-athletes for their exceptional athletic and academic achievements, as well as their contributions to their campuses and communities. 

Balancing academics and athletics at Tennessee 

For Milloy, the accolades are just part of the story. Her impact stretched beyond the field as she successfully balanced the rigors of studying neuroscience with the demands of elite competition. 

Milloy excelled in the classroom, graduating magna cum laude with a degree in neuroscience before earning her MBA. She became the first softball player to receive Tennessee's Torchbearer Award, the university's highest student honor, recognizing both her academic excellence and her commitment to service. 

She credits her widespread success first to the impact of her parents. Her father, Lawyer, played football and baseball at Washington before spending 15 years as a safety in the NFL and earning Pro Bowl honors four times. Her mother, Claudine, was a two-time All-America sprinter at Washington. 

"My parents told me like you're going to be elite at whatever you do. It doesn't matter if you play sports. It doesn't matter if you're in chess club or you do musicals or plays. You're going to go out there, and you're going to be the best," Milloy said. "So I think I just kind of took that mindset not only into sports but into my academics because that's what's going to set you up for success in the future. Unfortunately, right now there's not as much of a platform like other professional sports for women's softball. It's definitely getting there, but I knew that I wanted to set myself up for success if I didn't end up going to play professional softball." 

Leadership beyond the softball field 

Milloy's journey was shaped not only by her personal drive but also by the support system she found at Tennessee. She points to the impact of former head coach Ralph Weekly and his wife, Karen, who now leads the program. 

"Having Ralph and Karen Weekly as your softball coach, you weren't going to be getting C's in your classes. She was a lawyer before she was coaching," Milloy said. "And that just speaks to the type of woman that she is. So I think that's just kind of another reason why I was going to go in to excel in the classroom because she pushed us to that level. 

"Being coached by a woman like her, it makes me want to cry because I just love her so much. She is someone that cares about you, not only on the field, but your academics, your personal life. She's not going to sugarcoat anything. She's going to be frank with you, and she's going to tell you how it is. But I think that just shows that she loves you, and she will make those relationships with you outside the field so that she is able to do that. I think having her as a leader to kind of see what I want to be in a leader helped me mold myself to be that leader for my team." 

From this impact, Milloy learned that leadership wasn't just about what happened between the lines. During the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, she took on a role many student-athletes might have shied away from: helping guide her team through meaningful conversations about race and identity. She organized a book club, leading her teammates in discussions about race and the Black experience in America. 

"Being able to lead that and give my perspective as a young Black woman living in America at the time, and getting to talk about the people who I'm closest with … I really enjoyed that because I was able to open up their eyes," Milloy said. 

Milloy's leadership extended to Tennessee's graduate business school, where she co-founded DOPE, which stands for Diverse Organization for Propelling Excellence, the first student group dedicated to supporting multicultural graduate students in the Haslam College of Business. 

"That was just another step into my leadership and my service journey. And it was just a community where people of color, Haslam graduate students, can come and get advice from professionals that look like them, can also have a community," she said. 

A lasting impact on women's sports and community 

Despite her long list of accolades, Milloy never lost sight of what mattered most: her ability to inspire and uplift others. She poured herself into service, launching Kiki Kamp, a softball camp for over 100 girls to learn the sport from Tennessee student-athletes. She also dedicated time to organizations like the Special Olympics, Girls Inc. and the Emerald Youth Foundation, proving that her success wasn't just about personal achievements but about lifting others up along the way. 

"The thing that makes me the proudest about my collegiate career is probably just the transformation in the woman that I've become. Softball's great, and that's what has opened a lot of doors for me, but more than that is the relationships I've created and the person that I've become. I kind of came in as just someone who put their head down and just worked and didn't really think about the relationship piece of the game," Milloy said. "But when you're put into a leadership position, you kind of have to make sure that you connect with your teammates or know how to connect or have those people surrounding you that you can tell that when you're being vulnerable, because leadership is not just about doing it yourself. So I think that's the biggest thing that I learned is just being able to build those relationships with people so that you can rise up to one goal." 

Through it all, Milloy remained grateful for the experiences that shaped her — on and off the field. When reflecting on her journey, she describes her college experience in one word: pivotal. 

"Because coming into college for anyone is a pivotal experience. It's your first time being alone. But throughout those four years — for me, five years — you just grow so much," she said. "Playing on a team and being around some of your favorite people every day, those are just people that are going to be ingrained within your soul for the rest of your life."