Gilbert's long arms lead to SUA success on mound
E. WALNUT HILLS –
Leave it to the catcher to tell about the pitcher. Or the senior to tell about the sophomore.
"Here's the quote for Sammy Gilbert if you need it," St. Ursula Academy senior catcher Lydia Spade offered without solicitation. "Just say, 'I catch everything.'"
OK, but who is talking there, Spade or Gilbert, a sophomore pitcher and left fielder for the Bulldogs?
"Good question," Spade said. "Both of us. If I throw it back high to her, she catches it. If she throws it in the dirt to me, I block it. We catch everything."
Gilbert has caught fire on the mound for SUA, emerging from a preseason group of four possible pitchers on first-year head coach Jon Sheehan's club to become one of two starters. A shoulder injury to junior Megan Chapman put Gilbert all alone in the starter's role.
While Chapman could be back in action this week, Sheehan doesn't mind Gilbert going solo on the mound.
"We had 1 and 1A going there, so it's no problem at all," he said. "I'm very pleased with how her approach is. My biggest fear in t
he preseason was a lot of balls, but she's had great control. She's very focused on getting ahead and pitching ahead.
"She has a mechanism where she tries to touch her shoulder blades together behind her back to keep her structure all the way through the pitch and it works for her."
Gilbert said that was her mom's idea.
"She says I have terrible posture, that I'm always slumping," Gilbert said. "I just roll my shoulders back and try to stand up straight. I get more length that way."
In fact, Gilbert's arms are long enough for Spade to nickname her Levers. She's worked those long arms enough to find herself among the Girls Greater Catholic League leaders in earned-run average (1.36) and strikeouts (33) through six games, five as a starter.
"Early in the preseason I was wild because I was experimenting with pitch calls," Gilbert said. "We were trying different pitches in different situations when there was no pressure just to see if there was something that could work.
"Once the season started, it was time to bear down more and just go with what we knew was going to work. I just love pitching. I don't know what I love about it. I don't know how to put it in words, but I just love it."
Gilbert - an Anderson Township resident who lived in South Dakota until fifth grade when her family moved to Cincinnati - also plays basketball for the Bulldogs. She said she enjoys both sports equally. In the classroom she's taking honors chemistry this year and will take AP Chemistry next year in preparation for studying something in the medical field in college.
Her favorite softball memory came last season when she pitched a 6-2 victory over heavily-favored Loveland in what then-coach Chrissy Martini deemed a throw-the-freshman-to-the-wolves start.
"I always believed in myself, but I never knew before that she believed in me," Gilbert said. "That meant the world to me. That gave me the confidence to keep pitching."