Western Pa. high school slow-pitch softball continues growing, has hopes of future PIAA membership

By: Dave Mackall
Monday, September 2, 2024 | 11:44 AM

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The sound of crickets in the cool evening air as dew was settling on the grass served as a reminder of the annual rite of fall ball. With it, high school sports teams were getting into the swing.

At a recent practice in the Carbon section of Hempfield Township, coach Mike Palmiero’s deep, authoritative voice could be heard above any other noise.

“Let’s get back and try that again. If we can’t get it right, those gassers are looking mighty good right now,” Palmiero said to the girls on his Hempfield slow-pitch softball team, referring to a common conditioning drill in football that usually involves running 100-yard sprints.

But wait, high school softball in the fall?

Unlike its fast-pitch counterpart that relies on pitching dominance during the spring season, autumn’s slow-pitch version evokes plenty of action on offense and defense as batters seek finding the “meat” of the ball.

“In this sport, hitting is an art,” said Palmiero, who previously spent five seasons as an assistant football coach at Norwin and Penn-Trafford before taking on the role of slow-pitch softball coach at Hempfield, known for its success at the fast-pitch level, where the Spartans have won four PIAA championships.

“The biggest difference between fast pitch and slow pitch, obviously, is the speed of the pitch and the arc of the ball,” Palmiero said. “We have a special swing that we teach them. It has a little bit of an incline — but not a lot — because you don’t want them to uppercut. You want them to come up and meet the ball where the ‘meat’ is.”

Emma Orndorff, a senior outfielder at Hempfield, knows the routine. Mastering it is another matter.

“It’s pretty hard to hit it, especially if the pitcher has a very high arc and it’s coming down right in front of your face,” she said. “You have to get it perfectly out of the air. It’s not coming straight at you, like in fast-pitch.”

Players who swing level or underneath the ball more likely will wind up with a pop-up, Palmiero said. Overcompensating at times results in a ground ball.

“We want you to get that bat speed through the zone and crush the ball. Just crush it,” he said. “We don’t want a long fly ball. We want a line drive. Long fly balls in this league are going to be caught. The name of the game for us is line drives. We have team speed and can get on the bases and run. We want to put pressure on the defense and make our offense control the tempo.”

Slow-pitch softball, long linked to co-ed settings and Sunday over-the-hill crowds, is gaining momentum at the high school level in Western Pennsylvania, said Mt. Lebanon coach Leo Orelli, who serves as president of the upstart Western Pennsylvania Interscholastic Softball League, a 10-member loop of varsity club teams that originated in 2006.

As with the Georgia High School Association, Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association and Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, among others, slow-pitch softball in Pennsylvania has an eye toward gaining membership in the PIAA).

The WPISL’s motto reads: “Dedicated to slow-pitch softball as a high school sport.”

The league, like other varsity club sports, is not affiliated with the WPIAL and not sanctioned by the PIAA, which requires 25 participating teams in a sport to be recognized for district and state championship play.

“It’s going to take time to get there,” Orelli said. “With co-ops, we’ve got 13 at this point. We’re trying to go from the bottom up to get school districts to participate. We feel like if we do that, the kids in the youth divisions that move up the ladder will some day be part of the varsity teams.”

Thomas Jefferson and Upper St. Clair are two recent start-up programs that Orelli is hopeful will add to the varsity level in the coming years.

“I’ve laid out a five-year plan to meet the goal of 25 teams. We’ve got a lot of irons in the fire,” Orelli said.

With the season schedule about to begin in early September, Palmiero was ramping up the intensity at his practices. He was confident his team was making progress after bowing out of last year’s WPISL playoffs with a 19-4 loss to eventual champion Montour in the quarterfinals.

“After last year, they learned a valuable lesson as to what it’s like to play a team that can absolutely hit the ball,” he said. “To learn how to take that pressure and equate it into the following year, like they’re doing right now, they know where they have to be this year.”

The Spartans return all but one starter from 2023, and for most girls currently on the team, the continuous action on offense and defense speaks louder than recurring strikeouts.

“People think slow-pitch is just slow, and it’s (beneath) fast pitch,” Hempfield junior outfielder Chloe Snyder said. “But I was someone who played fast pitch for a while, and I can say this is more fun. You get more action in the field. You’re not just waiting for three strikes to go by, like in fast pitch.”

The stigma sometimes tied to club sports concerns Orelli, who wishes for high school slow-pitch softball in Pennsylvania to be taken seriously as a varsity sport.

Those, he said, who continue to show up year after year for the cause are the backbone of a movement to become relevant.

“It’s a passion,” Palmiero said. “I love coaching, but it’s just not the coaching in this case. It’s about these girls. They like playing this game. When my daughter played, I could see it in her eyes. She just didn’t like fast pitch. These girls find a home here, and we’ve been able to increase our participation numbers. We’re doing well. And they still love the game.”

Tags: Hempfield