Power Up the Middle

To have a solid softball team you have to be strong up the middle.

You must have players who are deft defensively at as many of the five key positions — catcher, pitcher, second base, shortstop and center field — as possible.

A quick glance around the landscape of the Louisville area shows plenty of teams in the Sixth, Seventh and Eighth regions are teeming with talent up the middle this softball season.

Starting at home (plate), you’ll find Manual’s Aly Brand, Mercy’s Kellie Quarles, Beth Haven’s Kacie Vincent and Shelby County’s Shauna Gramig among others.

Brand batted .320 last season and had a .995 fielding percentage, making only one error.

Quarles, meanwhile, has been a mainstay for the Jaguars since the first game of her freshman year.

“Kellie is the best catcher I’ve had the privilege to coach,” says Mercy head coach Josh Bloomer. “She takes great pride in her mechanics behind the plate and with the young pitchers we have on the mound, she’s been a very calming influence to them. I can’t even begin to count the number of runs she’s saved us over the years. I frequently have umpires come up to me during the game to let me know how impressive Kellie is behind the plate.”

Vincent, who hit .325 last spring, is back for her sixth season as the Bearcats’ backstop, while Gramig has caught Rocket pitchers since the eighth grade. The Eighth Region preseason Player of the Year hit .304 last season.

To go along with these catchers are a plethora of senior pitchers. They include Shelby County’s Haleigh LeCompte, Beth Haven’s Kayla Bobby, Pleasure Ridge Park’s Megan Beecham, Ballard’s Katie Pfost and Manual’s Jordan Trimble.

LeCompte missed most of last season after breaking her wrist in an early-season game.

“After she got hit she went on ahead to pitch two more scoreless innings to get a 1-0 win,” Shelby County coach Kelly Cable recalls.

LeCompte’s return and leadership, along with Gramig’s, will be key if the Rockets are to get back to the Eighth Region final.

“It’s very important to the performance of the team to have those two up the middle,” Cable says. “The team has confidence in them and I feel that makes them perform better behind them.”

The same is true at Beth Haven with its Vincent-Bobby battery. Bobby missed last season due to injury, but went 22-10 with 324 strikeouts and a 1.38 earned run average in 2007.

“Having several sixth- through eighth-graders starting, and contributing, on the varsity team is an obvious disadvantage when it comes to experience,” Bearcats coach Billy Bell says. “Most teams we play are much older. Kayla and Kacie provide leadership up the middle. They are able to encourage our less-experienced players because they were once in their shoes. They keep them focused during close games. The younger kids really look up to them. Their leadership strengthens our defense and we usually stay competitive with any team we play.”

Beecham, meanwhile, led the Panthers to last year’s Sixth Region title. The fifth-year starter posted a 1.66 ERA in PRP’s first 10 games this season.

Ballard, which beat PRP in the first round of last year’s State Tournament, won its first 17 games of this season largely due to Pfost. She went 10-5 in 2008 as the Bruins’ No. 2 starter, then won her first 11 games this season as their ace.

Pfost’s first loss of this season came to Trimble, who was 12-1 with a 0.40 ERA last year. Trimble, also a shortstop for the Crimsons, hit .447 with five homers last season.

Speaking of shortstop, that position is stacked with Mercy’s Ashley McNutt, Presentation’s Chrisianna Roberts, Ballard’s Erin Thompson and Eastern’s Morgan Baker in addition to Trimble.

McNutt, a Class 2A honorable mention all-state pick last year, has moved from third base to short this season to shore up the Jaguars’ young infield.

“In our program a lot of responsibility is put on the shortstop to make sure everyone else in the infield is positioned properly and knows the defensive set we are in,” Bloomer says. “Having someone there as talented as Ashley, and as knowledgeable of the game, is priceless. She can make plays that most high school players can’t and she has such a high softball IQ that she is able to make plays that many don’t consider. With three first-year varsity players on the infield, Ashley brings a sense of security to her teammates and they really look to her for guidance.”

Roberts gives first-year coach Lacy Wood something similar.

“It’s not just important to have someone of Chrisanna’s caliber anchoring the infield, but also being an infield presence,” Wood says. “Chrisanna has to be the most outgoing kid on the field and off the field. It doesn’t matter if she’s talking to the umpires in between innings or talking to her teammates, she always seems to have a smile on her face and has come into her senior season as a student of the game. She wants to learn every day and make herself better every day. … The type of player she is, a blue-collar worker, is exactly what we strive to tell the rest of the team: If we work that much harder than everyone else, we can compete with the best.”

Thompson makes Ballard one of the best teams in the state. The speedy senior hit .456 in the Bruins’ first 22 games this year.

Baker, a six-year varsity player who’s signed to play for the University of Indianapolis next year, led the Eagles in home runs — including a game-winner in the district tournament — and extra-base hits last season.

“In one game, Morgan combined with our second baseman (Chelsea Collard) for three double plays,” Eastern coach Melissa Kenny says. “If a ball is hit up the middle, I am confident that between the two of them there will be a play made.”

Collard is one of several solid second basemen in the area along with Atherton’s Israel Cook and Butler’s Jessica Thompson to name a few.

Cook hit .319 with 10 stolen bases last year and was hitting .455 with four steals through the Rebels’ first eight games this season.

The last line of middle defense is center field, where you’ll find Southern junior Samantha Starkey and Eastern senior Shelby Taylor, among others.

Starkey helped the Trojans reach the Sixth Region final last season, while Taylor’s Eagles made the Seventh Region final.

“Shelby does a good job of taking control in the outfield,” Kenny says. “Her throws are accurate, and she has held runners at third base who could have scored on many other centerfielders … Shelby is the type of player that all coaches would love to have on their team.”

Chances are, most coaches would love to have any of these girls playing up the middle for them.

Josh Cook is a freelance writer based in the Louisville area.