Jackie Moran has played softball in Cape Elizabeth from T-ball on up, but when she was 11 years old she decided to be a pitcher. At first, it didn’t go so well.
“I was really bad,” she says. “I was really inconsistent and wild. I could barely make it across the plate.”
But Moran stuck it out. She took lessons and changed her motion and, finally, after about year she was able to throw strikes consistently.
“My father was a big influence. He always tells me to go out and be the best I can, and that’s what I try to do. My dad and I were just really committed.”
That commitment has brought Moran, a junior at Cape Elizabeth High School, and her teammates the first Western Maine softball title in school history. Though they fell short in the Class B championship game, all but two members of the squad are eligible to return next season.
On the mound, Moran is poker-faced and even-keeled. She maintains the same focused expression. After receiving the ball from catcher Colleen Martin, Moran licks her fingers and scrapes her cleat across the pitching rubber.
And then she bounces, bending at the knees a number of times before releasing the pitch.
“It helps to keep me loose. Otherwise I’m stiff waiting for the batter to get ready.”
Martin, a freshman, took over the job of catching Moran this season and the two “work really well together.” It helped that they both played on the Cape basketball team over the winter.
“She is really consistent,” Martin says. “Where I put the glove the pitch pretty much goes there, and if the umpire has a small strike zone she adjusts really well to it.”
Moran says that she doesn’t generally enjoy being in pressure situations, yet she does like being on the mound in the middle of the action.
“You control the game, and you decide when you’re going to start the play,” says Moran. “I like the power of everyone trusting me to get it done.”
And she has been getting it done for the Capers. Moran was 14-5 last season, and her team made it to the regional final. This year she was 17-3 and Cape went to the state championship game.
Coach Joe Henrikson calls Moran “a winner” and says that she’s “gutsy.” He knows how much she has meant to Cape softball.
“Before the (regional semifinal against Greely) I talked to the team,” the coach said. “I told them, ‘She’s been carrying us game after game after game. Let’s give this kid some runs.'”
Moran’s teammates went out and put 10 runs on the board that day, making her job quite a bit easier. They’ve also done the job behind her in the field.
“I have confidence in my teammates, that they’ll get anything that’s hit to them,” she says. “I just go out there and do the best I can, and if they hit me they hit me.”
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