Harmony’s Lele Ocasio should have been hyped.
One day after being invited to play for the Puerto Rican Junior National softball team last April, she threw a perfect game against Satellite Beach Satellite.
After the game, attended by junior national coaches, Ocasio did not change her demeanor.
She was perfectly calm.
“I know she was excited, but it is extremely hard to get emotion out of her,” Harmony coach Jeff Fiorelli said. “She doesn’t throw her glove or her hands up in the air or fall to her knees, like you see from major-league pitchers.”
No-hitters, at any level, are cause for celebration. In softball, they occur more frequently than in baseball — Ocasio started the season with five no-hitters in a row, after all — but does that minimize their significance?
Hardly.
“Regardless of whether it is baseball or softball, it is a tremendous accomplishment,” said Rollins pitching coach Hope Bitzer, who pitched at Lake Mary. “No matter how many no-hitters you throw, it is a special occasion.”
And the Sentinel’s coverage area has had a few special pitchers who have achieved one of their position’s most notable achievements. Besides Ocasio, whose father estimates has thrown 22 no-hitters between high school and travel ball, former Pine Castle Christian ace Kaley Bitterman tossed five no-nos last spring. That’s three fewer than Trinity Prep’s Sydney Carpenter had in 2012.
Shaina Dent had 17 no-hitters for Groveland South Lake. Elizabeth Birle and Kiersten Coffman threw consecutive perfect games while at Winter Springs.
For some, superstition kicks in.
“I don’t really know when I am throwing a no-hitter unless somebody says something to me,” said Birle, now a freshman first baseman at Virginia Tech. “In my senior year, I was working on a no-hitter, and [a teammate] came up to me in the sixth inning and said, ‘I don’t think they have gotten any hits yet.’
“I said, ‘Are you serious?’ Then, of course, they got two hits.”
As innings pass with a potential no-hitter intact, pitchers often battle nerves and chatty teammates.
“If I start thinking about it, I get tense, and I get cautious with my pitches,” said Autumn Hanners, a former Lake Howell pitcher now at the College of Central Florida in Ocala. “It’s better to just pitch like you have been the whole game.”
That seems to work for Ocasio (6-0), who has committed to Florida. She has a fastball clocked at 68 mph, the equivalent of a 98.3-mph pitch in baseball from a mound that is much closer to the hitter. High-school softball pitchers throw from a rubber 43 feet from home plate, compared to 60 1/2 feet in baseball.
Given the distance, providing hitters a reaction time of 371-thousandths of a second to react, and the effectiveness of her pitches, Ocasio has been all but, well, unhittable.
“Honestly, I don’t celebrate,” Ocasio said. “I just go home. That’s what I have been training for. It is an accomplishment, but I don’t get too excited.”
According to the National Federation of State High School Association’s record book, 15 pitchers entering this season have thrown five or more consecutive no-hitters since 1982. Ocasio’s streak was broken Wednesday in a victory against Clermont East Ridge.
“I wouldn’t say it’s not a big deal because it is,” Ocasio said. “It’s very humbling throwing all those no-hitters, but it isn’t just me. I am just going to keep going in the circle and pitch. That’s what I do.”
Nobody is doing it better.
jrwilliams@tribune.com or 352-742-5921
