Last year’s softball season can be summed up in one word: rescheduled.
Thanks in no small part to early spring snows, including the monster blizzard a year ago today that dumped 20 inches of snow onto Rensselaer’s home field, the softball team didn’t get their season going in earnest until the second week of April. As a result, the team was forced to play a lot of extra doubleheaders as makeup games, including one incredible stretch of 10 games over five consecutive days.
Couple that with the team having only one true starting pitcher, and that leaves you with one very, very tired arm.
That arm belongs to junior Shannon Smith, clearly the team’s ace. While forced to start 23 of the team’s 34 games—and pitch relief in another nine—Smith still posted a strong 2.07 ERA, holding her opponents to a .236 batting average. She went the distance in 22 of her starts, and recorded four shutouts.
But her team managed a miniscule .238 batting average overall in support, and that left Smith with a .500 record on the year, 13-13.
This year the team has a new head coach in Erika Lewis, who has already targeted the offense as her primary concern. Lewis places some of the blame on last season’s coaching that put the Red Hawks into a batting order that just didn’t make sense. “The mix wasn’t right,” Lewis said. “They couldn’t get the job done in the right spots.”
Lewis is looking to five key players to step up their game this year and starting knocking the ball around—Shannon Smith, her twin sister and battery partner Leanna, senior shortstop Stacey Eisenman, junior firstbaseman Megan Porter, and newcomer Liz Vitaliano, primarily a centerfielder. Of Vitaliano, Lewis says, “she has real good power.”
The five all have good potential but need to take their hitting to the next level. “The whole order is solid if they do what they’re capable of,” Lewis said.
Porter probably had the best year at the plate of the five last season, going .280 with two doubles, two triples, and one home run, though backstop Leanna Smith led the team in RBIs and runs scored with 16 and 18, respectively.
The new coaching has the players optimistic about the upcoming season. “There is a commitment there that wasn’t there last year, and it helps that we have coaches now that really care about how we do, and plan practices and make us work hard,” Shannon Smith said.
The unusual combo of twin sisters serving as star pitcher and catcher has suited the Red Hawks well in the Smiths’ two seasons so far. “I’ve always had my sister catch me, and I think I pitch the best when she is catching me because she knows what my strengths and weaknesses are as a pitcher,” Shannon said.
Leanna agrees. “I’ve done it for so long I just know what to call.”
This season, though, Leanna will have to do something that she didn’t do very often last year—catch other pitchers. The team has two new freshman hurlers, Ali O’Connor and Danielle Haberman, and Lewis is hoping to use them on at least a semi-regular basis, especially to start the second game of doubleheaders and to pitch in relief of Smith. There are hurdles to overcome—both O’Connor and Haberman are still adjusting to the 43’ college-level distance from the mound to the plate, three feet longer than at high-school level—but Leanna, who’s already practiced catching with the two, says they are “very promising.”
