As usual, Kaia Parnaby has a pretty full summer of softball coming up.

She’s scheduled to return home to Australia in early June to rejoin the national team on trips to Oklahoma for the World Cup of Softball and to Vancouver for the Canadian Open International Championship.

But for the moment, she’s just looking forward to some down time.

"I’m going to take a long week off and give myself some time to relax," Parnaby said on Tuesday.

And why not.

Parnaby hasn’t had many breaks since early February while throwing more innings than any University of Hawaii pitcher before her and blazing past long-standing school and conference records.

Parnaby’s endurance and effectiveness were key elements in the Rainbow Wahine softball team’s 45-13 season, a spring highlighted by a Big West title and the program’s third NCAA tournament appearance in the past four years.

The offseason began a bit earlier than the Wahine had hoped when an 8-0 loss to Washington in Seattle eliminated them from the NCAA regionals on Sunday. Ending the season on the wrong end of a no-hitter certainly stung. But in the wider view, the loss was just the final snapshot in a 58-game collage they’d pieced together over the past four months, and for the seniors, the past four years.

"We ended up losing our last game, but only one team, if you go into postseason, can win their last game," Parnaby said. "But we’ve had an amazing run at UH. Just to be that successful as a class, we can always take that out of it."

Parnaby, Tara Anguiano, Brynne Buchanan, Jessica Iwata and Kelly Majam teamed with the senior classes preceding them and this year’s group of underclassmen to produce a 176-56 (.759) mark and three conference championships over their four-year careers.

Considering UH lost five starters off a 2012 team that went 44-9, coach Bob Coolen felt this year’s team "overachieved" in maintaining a place in the national polls, peaking at No. 14 in the USA Today/NFCA Division I Top 25.

"This senior class made a statement," Coolen said.

"We climbed the ladder, and no one expected after we lost last year’s senior class for us to be where we were."

As UH’s leadoff and cleanup hitters, Majam and Iwata held foundational roles in the order for four years and leave as two of the most accomplished hitters in the program’s history.

Majam led the team with 18 home runs to raise her school-record total to 72, and her 59 runs set a Big West single-season record. Despite a painful shoulder injury, Iwata started all 58 games at shortstop and drove in 38 runs, finishing with a UH-record 197 in her career.

Parnaby (39-7, 1.52) led the nation in victories for much of the season while throwing 3122⁄3 innings in 50 appearances. She set school and Big West single-season records in wins and strikeouts (342) while becoming the first Big West pitcher to throw more than 300 innings since 1990.

Her departure leaves UH thin on starting experience in the circle heading into 2014. With eight starts, freshman Loie Kesterson (4-4, 5.55) will be the staff’s most seasoned member entering next season.

Two pitchers from California high schools, Brittany Hitchcock and Heather Morales, signed on as part of UH’s incoming class. As such, Coolen said UH will enter fall practice "needing (catchers) Sharla (Kliebenstein) and Kayla (Wartner) to nurture the freshman pitchers along with Loie.

"Those are some of the discussions we’ve had, and where does Keiki (Carlos) want to fit into the pitching rotation."

Carlos struggled in her early pitching appearances, but the freshman established herself in right field and emerged as one of the team’s leading hitters at .320 with seven home runs and 32 runs batted in.

Kliebenstein is expected to get a shot to start in center field as a senior after contributing as a left fielder, catcher and designated player this season.

Second baseman Jazmine Zamora closed the season as the team’s top hitter at .337 and will be part of next year’s group of seniors along with Kaile Nakao, who provided a solid defensive presence at third base. UH also returns established producers in Wartner and first-baseman Leisha Li‘ili‘i.

But on the flight back from Seattle, Coolen wasn’t quite ready to plot out next season after watching this year’s seniors — the last group to experience UH’s appearance in the 2010 Women’s College World Series — leave the field for the final time.

"You don’t really get a lot of time to sit down and reflect," he said. "You basically try to move forward and the bottom line is it’s hard saying goodbye."