At one point, Emma Paul wanted to be an engineer.
Then she did the math.
“I looked up a couple of engineering classes and I didn’t like it, but I wanted to focus on something that had to do with math and science,” Paul said. “When you look it up, aviation comes up.”
It’s not surprising the Armstrong senior decided she wants to be a pilot. She’s been soaring over the competition both on the court and the diamond for four years.
“She’s just a special type of player and a special type of person,” Armstrong softball coach Keith Shaffer said. “I just think that maturity, coming along with age, has helped her to get better in both sports.”
To say that Paul is a championship-caliber player would be an understatement, as during the 2023-24 school year, she competed in three WPIAL championship events.
In the fall, she was a member of the River Hawks’ Class 3A golf team that finished seventh at Cedarbrook behind eventual state champion Peters Township. In the winter, she played in the WPIAL Class 5A basketball final at Petersen Events Center, while, in the spring, she helped the softball team win its second WPIAL Class 5A softball championship in three years at PennWest California.
In her career, she played in four WPIAL softball finals, winning titles in 2022 and 2024 and was in the 2021 and 2022 state softball championship games.
“I’m a person that doesn’t really like sitting down and I’m always wanting to do something,” Paul said. “That’s why I excel at sports. When I was younger, I always wanted to be doing something.”
All that practice paid off, as the 5-foot-5 Division II Fairmont State softball commit is the 2024 Post-Gazette girls Athlete of the Year.
“She has the whole package. She has the softball skills, the basketball skills, and just her desire to win is what sets her apart,” Armstrong basketball coach Jim Callipare said. “She’s willing to work. She never misses practice. She wants to win more than anyone in the gym and she works harder than anyone in the gym.”
Just to illustrate how impressive of an athlete Paul is, consider this: She is only the third athlete ever to make both the Post-Gazette Fab 5 for basketball and the P-G All-Area softball team in the same year. The other two are 1981 North Hills graduate Leigh Curl and 2019 P-G Athlete of the Year Rachel Martindale of North Allegheny.
“I think it has to do with her intelligence level. She’s just a really smart player. She’s able to balance the two, and I know that during the basketball season, she would continue to work on softball,” Shaffer said. “She was able to balance the two things and she’s just such a talented athlete that she was able to do it very well.”
This year in softball, she was an All-Area selection and the Class 5A Player of the Year as she led the River Hawks to the WPIAL title. As the Armstrong leadoff hitter, she batted .478 with a .609 on-base percentage and a 1.570 OPS. The shortstop also blasted 7 homers, drove in 26 and scored 36 times.
In the WPIAL championship game against eventual state champion Thomas Jefferson, she singled and scored a run in a seven-run sixth inning that propelled the team to a 9-3 victory.
That’s not all that surprising. Paul will be playing softball in college and already had a title to her credit from 2022 when the River Hawks brought home the school’s first WPIAL title in any sport since Kittanning and Ford City merged following the 2015-16 school year.
But it was in the WPIAL basketball final against two-time defending champion South Fayette that she really showed her prowess.
Trailing by as many as 11 points in the second half, Paul put on a show for the ages. She scored 24 points in the final two quarters, including six 3-pointers, netted 14 of the team’s final 16 in the game and finished with a game-high 36 in the team’s 70-63 loss to the Lions. It was the most points ever scored in either a Class 5A or Class 6A final since the two classifications were added in 2017.
“She put the team on her back, not only in that game but many games, and again, it’s just her will. She had that belief that nobody could stop her,” Callipare said. “I remember in a timeout at the end of a quarter in that game and I drew up a play for somebody else because I thought maybe we should give a different wrinkle. She looked at me and said, ‘Don’t take the ball out of my hands,’ and I said, ‘Alright, kid, you’ve got it.’ And that says a lot about her.”
Paul may have had an outstanding game at The Pete, but that wasn’t her best statistical game of the season. She set school records with 45 points and 10 3-pointers in a 78-70 win against Mars on Jan. 4. She finished her career as the River Hawks’ all-time leading scorer, boys or girls, with 1,721 points.
But when she heads to Fairmont State, she will be fully committed to softball, which is somewhat bittersweet.
“I love both sports,” Paul said. “It’s definitely going to be hard in the winter when I would normally be playing basketball the last 12 or 13 years of my life.”
She might have had a future on the hardwood if she had been a little taller. She’s listed at 5-foot-5, but she’s probably an inch or two shorter.
Despite that, she’s never let her height be an obstacle.
“I’m 5-5 with shoes on, maybe. I’m 5-3¾. Ever since I was little, I was always small compared to everyone else, and it’s never stopped me,” Paul said. “I just think that it’s pushed me to be better than everyone who was given better genetics than me.”
Now, though, Paul is looking forward to making an impact at the next level. Though walking onto the field and being an immediate contributor as a freshman would be a challenge for most, it’s something she’s already done twice in high school when she made it into the starting lineups in both basketball and softball.
This time, she’ll also have the advantage of having played with some of her future teammates on her travel team this summer.
“I just have to show them what I can do,” Paul said. “I’d like to think I have the talent to walk on and perform. I just have to show them that when we play in our fall league games so that, when the spring comes, I’m ready to play.”
Keith Barnes: kbarnes.pg@gmail.com and @kbarnes_pghsprt on X
First Published: June 30, 2024, 9:30 a.m.
Updated: July 1, 2024, 7:16 p.m.