Throughout Pitt softball’s game Sunday, Kayla Harris tried not to think about the feat that was looming closer with each passing out.
“I heard my teammates talking about it and everything, but I was just kind of like ‘I just want to throw my game, I don’t want to worry about myself and I don’t want to jinx myself,’” she said. “If it happens, it happens.”
And happen it did.
The Pitt junior pitcher threw a perfect game to help lead the Panthers to a 5-0 victory against Southeastern Louisiana in their final game of the Troy Classic in Troy, Ala.
The perfect game is the second in program history. The other came last season when then-freshman Sarah Dawson retired all 15 batters in a five-inning, 13-0 victory against Providence. In addition to her players, Pitt coach Holly Aprile credited those recent and previously unprecedented accomplishments to the work being done by third-year pitching coach Lauren Cognigni.
Harris struck out four batters, with her team’s defense recording the other 17 outs. Many of those outs, according to Aprile, came out weakly hit ground balls, with only two hits — a sharp liner back to Harris and a ball hit to the hole, where the shortstop made a play — coming with any kind of substantive force.
The perfect game, as its title suggests, is an uncommon feat in softball. Though there isn’t any available information on the number of perfect games in NCAA history, Texas’ Cat Osterman holds the Division I record with nine career perfect games.
“Everything has to go right,” Aprile said. “That’s a tough task. Your fielders have to be perfect, your pitcher has to be perfect. It’s everything.”
For much of the game, the Panthers needed every one of Harris’ outs they could get, as they had only one run through the first six innings. Unlike how it often is in baseball, Harris’ teammates didn’t avoid interacting with her out of superstition, but the tenor around the team during Harris’ performance was, as Aprile put it, “business as usual.” Upon registering the final out, she was mobbed by teammates and after the game, she received a flurry of calls and messages, even from former high school classmates she said she hadn’t spoken to in years.
With the win, Pitt moved to 12-2 on the season and, at No. 19 in the most recent USA Today/NSCA coaches poll, is ranked as high as it has been in program history. A Chesapeake, Va., native, Harris has been instrumental in that success, accounting for half of the Panthers’ wins while leading the team in ERA (1.46) and strikeouts (23).
After Sunday, she has another achievement to add to an ever-growing list.
“I was ecstatic, but I was kind of thinking ‘Is this real life right now?’” Harris said. “Everything was just happening so fast. It kind of settled in, like ‘Wow, I just threw my first-ever perfect game.’”
Craig Meyer: cmeyer@post-gazette.com and Twitter @CraigMeyerPG.
First Published: February 27, 2017, 1:07 a.m.
