Ten To Watch
District softball players who are expected to have an impact in 2014:
• Alexa Archambeault, sophomore, Gannon: Hit .415 a year ago, third-highest in the PSAC … All PSAC West … Hit 4 homers and drove in 27 runs … Committed just one error.
• Laura Beck, sophomore, Geneva: Hit .387 as a freshman while starting all 43 games … 15 extra-base hits, 24 RBIs … First team all-PAC.
• Brenna Cosgrove, senior, Edinboro: Hit .370 and tied for team lead with 30 hits … Hit .424 with runners in scoring position … All-PSAC West last season.
• Kelsey Cunningham (Peters Twp.), senior, W&J: Hit .453 while leading PAC in hits (62), runs (47), doubles (16) and total bases (90) … 62 hits was a single-season school record … 4 homers, 20 RBIs.
• Taylor Geary (South Allegheny), sophomore, Point Park: Hit team-leading .420 with 5 HR, 31 RBIs and team-leading 54 hits. … All-KIAC selection last year.
• Danielle Massengil, junior, Thiel: .456 average was second in the PAC … tied for conference lead with 30 RBIs … Had 19 extra-base hits, including six homers, and 15 stolen bases … Led PAC with .772 slugging percentage.
• Caitlin Nealer (Valley), junior Allegheny: Led NCAC in wins (17), appearances, innings pitched, complete games and shutouts (6). … Her 276 strikeouts were the third-highest single-season total in school history. … 10 games with 10 or more K's.
• Lindsay Reicoff (Char Valley), sophomore, Cal:As a freshman last year, hit .401 with 12 doubles and 13 home runs. … PSAC West Freshman of the Year … Started all 44 games, including six at pitcher.
• Courtney Smith, senior, Mercyhurst: Hit team-leading .411 with 28 RBI … All-PSAC West first team
• Kelsey Shirey, junior, Grove City: Hit .441, good for fourth in the conference … Had 16 extra-base hits and scored 26 runs … Led PAC with 8 triples.
In 23 years overseeing the Robert Morris softball team, Craig Coleman has coached his share of talented pitchers. Count junior left-hander Nicole Sleith among them.
If she continues on her current trajectory, Sleith could turn out to be the best of all.
The Yough graduate entered 2014 as the two-time Northeast Conference Pitcher of the Year, and she’s off to a fast start with a 7-2 record, 0.77 ERA and 68 strikeouts.
Her career strikeout total (525) ranks fourth on the Colonials’ all-time list, and she’s on pace to become the program’s leader in strikeouts and wins.
“Nicole probably is one of the kids we’ve had pitching here who is the most complete,” Coleman said. “Nicole has great speed and great ball movement. She throws every single moving pitch you could ask a pitcher to have, and she’s very accurate with all those pitches.”
Sleith’s baptism into the college game was more abrupt than expected. When she arrived on the Moon campus two years ago, she figured to be the No. 2 pitcher behind Latrobe’s Alexa Bryson, a senior at the time.
But Bryson suffered an injury early in the season, catapulting Sleith into the No. 1 role. She responded with a school-record 25 wins and 251 strikeouts.
“I definitely wasn’t used to pitching two doubleheaders on a weekend,” she said. “It definitely helped me grow as a player. I learned a lot from it.”
The workload of 247 innings, however, was more than Coleman wanted for her. He was able to back her off last year to 170 1⁄3 innings, thanks in large part to the emergence of then-junior Geena Badolato, a Mt. Lebanon graduate who had her finest season as a collegiate pitcher in 2013.
Though Coleman’s goal is to try to keep Sleith’s innings down, he said he might be a little more liberal in using her this season.
Regardless of how many innings she throws, Sleith knows she can lean on catcher and fellow junior Sam Santillo. Santillo (Ellwood City) is the two-time NEC Defensive Player of the Year, and she and Sleith have forged a close-knit relationship.
“Whenever she’s calling pitches, almost 95 percent of the time the pitch she calls is the one I had in my head already,” Sleith said.
“She’s definitely on a level that I’ve never had the opportunity to catch until now,” Santillo said. “She has a variety of different pitches, and she throws all of them extremely well.”
For all she’s accomplished, Sleith isn’t satisfied. She continues to refine her pitches, as well as add more to her repertoire, and she recently has begun to throw inside more, something she had been reluctant to do.
Asked what Sleith’s ceiling might be, Coleman laughs.
“Just when I think she’s reached it, she shows me she hasn’t,” he said
Sleith likely will have some eye-popping numbers by the time her career at Robert Morris is through. But the only number she’s concerned with at the moment is one — as in, the No. 1 seed in the NEC Tournament.
Robert Morris has won or shared the NEC regular-season title each of the past three years but failed to win the postseason tournament. In fact, the Colonials haven’t won the NEC Tournament since 2005.
Sleith is eager to change that.
“I just want to win the tournament,” she said. “I would really like to be No. 1 seed again because I hear people saying, ‘I don’t want to be No. 1 seed. It’s like a bad curse.’ But I would like to prove people wrong.”
Chuck Curti is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. Reach him at ccurti@tribweb.com.
