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Tough battery is just the beginning for Lady Tigers softball
In baseball and softball alike, the battery -- the pitcher and catcher combination -- is arguably the most vital part of the defense and often the most relentless.
Though the pitcher gets most of the credit when an opposing team's offense doesn't fare well, both parts of the battery are dependent upon one another and neither would succeed without the other. If the pitcher's control is a little off on a given day, the burden of making up for those struggles often falls on the other half of the battery and vice versa.
Christian Novak has been the head of the battery for the Nevada Lady Tigers softball team throughout nearly all of the season and has worked with a couple of different catchers, but still will be the first to admit that any pitcher can look good, but only with the help of a quality catcher. Through the first 16 games of the season, Novak has thrown eight shutouts and had a staggering 103-14 strikeouts to walks ratio through the first 14 of those games -- 12 of which she pitched, only giving up the pitching circle to junior Olivia Culbertson twice -- and has made a number of quality hitters look foolish with her uncanny ability to hit nearly any spot she chooses at any time in her outing.
"She always has a go-to pitch. ... I'm pretty relaxed back there. Most of the time, I don't stress about whether she's going to hit her spot or not," Lady Tigers top catcher Nikki O'Bryan said.
On top of that ability that Novak has shown to hit her spots early, she possesses a very rare quality among pitchers. As her outings progress, that control and even her velocity have shown a strong tendency to not only stay up, but even improve. At many times this season, Novak has taken an inning or two before she was able to rein in her control and has thus been able to throw harder and hit her spots with more efficiency later in her outings.
Novak hasn't really gotten much of a chance to show her true abilities in that aspect of her game this year, however. In 16 games so far this season, the Lady Tigers have seen three called off after just three innings and many more came to an end in five or six, giving Novak several very short outings, despite pitching complete games.
"It really shortens the games and with one really solid pitcher and then Olivia (Culbertson), we get away from all the seven-inning games and we play more three, four-inning games because the offense is so good that we can score a lot of runs," Novak said.
With that success, many young players would let such things as the strikeouts-to-walks ratio get into their head and thus put more pressure on themselves to perform and keep up those high numbers. Novak, however, said that she takes a more team-oriented mindset to the game, simply focusing on hitting the spot that her catcher gives and leaving it to the defense behind her to make whatever play may be needed to record the out.
"I don't really focus on strikeouts," Novak said. "I just focus on hitting my spot, the spot my catcher gives me and if they hit it, I know my defense is going to catch it."
Though Novak is often able to maintain that mindset, O'Bryan said there have been times when she does get a little too much into the emotional side of the game and trying to do too much. "Sometimes I have to be like, 'Christian, you're not perfect.' ... Sometimes she tries to overthrow, but I try to make her compose herself and call time outs and make her laugh," O'Bryan said.
Though she has found herself in a catcher's typical position of trying to keep her pitcher composed through a few tough games, such is not the case for the rest of the defense. In many cases, the catcher is the anchor of the entire defense and the responsibility falls on that spot to know what the rest of the defense is going to do at a given time and to maintain the composure of the majority of the team, but the Lady Tigers have been able to lift that pressure off of the shoulders of O'Bryan and backup catcher Victoria Culbertson and placed it more upon themselves and each other.
Especially at the high school level, many players won't have the ability to learn from their own mistakes and help out the players around them if not in a traditional position of leadership, but such is not the case for the Lady Tigers. O'Bryan said that she has found great relief in the fact that many of the players surrounding her on the field are much more experienced than their ages may imply and have developed strong relationships amongst each other, thus spreading the responsibility of maintaining composure and motivation during play around the whole squad.
Those relationships and the division of responsibility they have created have been credited by both Novak and O'Bryan for helping them to relax and making their job of anchoring the defense much easier. Without that and the relationship she and Culbertson have developed with Novak, O'Bryan said that most of the success that she and her teammates have enjoyed this season on their way to a 16-0 record in what has already become the best season of the program's history wouldn't have been possible.
"We know each other and we've played together long enough we know when to say something and when not to say something," O'Bryan said. " Just playing together for so long, we know each other and we just, we know."