Burrell grad Armstrong battles through thumb injury to post solid freshman season for Gannon softball

Adjusting to college softball is difficult enough. Doing it while coping with an injury is even tougher.

When that affliction is a partially torn thumb ligament and the player dealing with it is a pitcher, that adds to the degree of difficulty.

That’s the Cliffs Notes version of pitcher Katie Armstrong’s freshman season at Gannon. The Burrell graduate suffered the injury to the thumb on her throwing (right) hand after the Golden Knights’ spring trip while doing, of all things, a sliding drill.

A cruel blow made worse by the fact that Armstrong never made a single plate appearance.

Further, she had made a smashing debut, with an 11-strikeout, two-earned-run victory over Tiffin. But the thumb injury forced her to miss a couple of weeks and slowed her transition to the college game.

Still, despite the setback, Armstrong had a solid season, posting a 6-5 record with a 3.68 ERA. She struck out 67 in 57 innings and won four consecutive decisions bridging late March and early April.

The Golden Knights, meanwhile, went 32-15 overall and 25-6 in the PSAC, losing two of three games to fall out of the conference tournament without getting a shot at the title.

“I had to figure out how to pitch a little differently just working around it,” Armstrong said about her thumb injury. “But I think I did push through it, and I found ways to make it work.”

Admittedly, some of Armstrong’s struggles were self-inflicted, too. She gave up nine home runs, including at least one in each of her last five outings.

“To be honest, I missed my spots,” Armstrong said about the glut of longballs, “and the hitters took advantage of it. In high school, I probably got away with it more, but now that we’re at this level, it’s definitely harder.”

Though Armstrong’s season was far from pristine, sixth-year coach Michelle Wiley found a lot of positives.

“She’s just a hard worker. She’s always up for a challenge,” Wiley said. “I love her demeanor on the mound. She learned that you can’t let the ball hang. You’ve got to hit your spots.

“It was a learning lesson. She’d give up a homer, but then she would come back strong after that. … She can complement any homer she gives up by striking people out as well.”

Throughout her time at Burrell, Armstrong was known as a strikeout pitcher. She had 689 in three years for the Bucs.

And while Armstrong still has that capability — she leans heavily on her screwball and changeup — she has learned how to pitch to contact more and trust her defense.

Wiley said she is less concerned with her pitchers generating strikeouts than she is with having them move the ball around and change speeds to produce weak contact.

No. 1 pitcher Maggie Lenda, for example, went 16-3 with a 2.44 ERA while posting a pedestrian 91 strikeouts in 120 2/3 innings. Lenda earned first-team All-PSAC honors for her efforts.

The rising senior proved to be a good role model for Armstrong.

“I think her confidence, she goes to the mound … we just talked about how her confidence is,” Armstrong said. “That was a huge thing for me to learn from her is just how confident she is when she pitches. I truly look up to that.”

Another player who helped Armstrong in her development was a fellow freshman, catcher Bella Atherton, who was a key player on Armstrong’s 2022 WPIAL championship team. Atherton started all 38 games in which she appeared and posted a stellar .989 fielding percentage, with only one passed ball and two errors.

Armstrong said the two of them were able to form a strong connection, one that figures to get even stronger this summer as they play on the same travel team.

“Bella knew how to catch me,” Armstrong said. “I knew how to pitch to Bella, and I feel really comfortable with her. It was a really good pitcher-catcher relationship. It’s awesome knowing we were both coming in as freshmen, and we’re going to be riding it out for the next three years together.

“(She is) truly stepping up and being a good leader-in-the-making.”

The rough patches aside, Armstrong had her share of highlights. In her first start back from the thumb injury, she struck out 12 while yielding only one earned run and no walks in a win over Edinboro. During her four-game winning streak (19 innings pitched), she gave up only six earned runs.

Her ERA dropped more than a run (4.60 to 3.55) in that stretch.

To build on her freshman season, Armstrong said she is working to refine each of the pitches in her repertoire: screwball, changeup, fastball, curve, riseball. Her travel team will play in three tournaments this summer, and, she said, she will work out one-on-one with a catcher two to three times per week.

She said she also wants to improve her endurance and conditioning so she can “go all seven innings and look the same from inning No. 1 to inning No. 7.”

Wiley said she is eager to see what Armstrong can produce in the years ahead. Her freshman season showed plenty of promise, and Wiley said the experiences of this past year will help Armstrong move steadily forward.

“I really preach on short-term memory,” Wiley said. “You’re going to have some amazing games, and you’re going to have some games where you’re not playing as well as you hope or you want or you’re able to. If we can continue to have that short-term memory, we can learn from it. But we shouldn’t dwell on it.

“Katie is here because she’s going to be a great pitcher. She’s a good pitcher right now, and if she continues to work hard and learn the game and mix things up a little bit more, she’s going to be just fine.”