PIAA CLASS AA SOFTBALL

Zoned in

Battered and bruised, Klinefelter helps give BEA another shot at state title

By Walt Moody

Bald Eagle Area softball catcher Brooke Klinefelter hobbled out of a dugout after a recent playoff game wearing about as much ice as Frosty the Snowman.

CDT/Craig Houtz

Bald Eagle Area catcher Brooke Klinefelter tags out Penns Valley's Rachel Byers (10) she attempts to steal home plate in the 1st inning on Thursday, April 2, 2009.

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• Lady Eagles hope history is on their side today

The ice, wrapped around both knees and her left ankle, is necessary to calm the swelling from injuries sustained both early and late in the season.

It’s the price Klinefelter has to pay to stay on the field — and one she’s more than willing to pay. It will take an awful lot to get her to leave Shippensburg University’s Robb Field for today’s PIAA Class AA title game against Brandywine Heights at noon.

“If it’s something that can wait until the end of the season, I’m not going to hold myself out,” said Klinefelter, who has battled a cartilage problem in her right knee most of the season. “Especially this late in the season, I’m not going to come out of there.”

Teammates and coaches marvel at Klinefelter’s threshold for pain. Catching is the toughest position on the knees and she’s rarely come out of games, even if it’s in hand.

“She’s really pushed herself and we really appreciate it,” second baseman Taylor Parsons said of Klinefelter. “She’s been doing great.”

“It’s incredible,” BEA coach Dave Breon said of pain tolerance. “As much as she’s been hampered with some of those injuries, I keep saying, “How do you feel?’ And she says, ‘I’m OK,’ and I know she’s not. She’s just not going to come out of that game.”

The best example came in the Lady Eagles’ quarterfinal win over Sto-Rox. Klinefelter and first baseman Meghan Granite collided in the top of the first inning while going after a foul pop-up. Klinefelter suffered a deep bruise on her left knee and limped off the field.

Still smarting, she hobbled to the plate in the first inning and whacked a double down the left-field line. With the Lady Eagles up 7-0 late in the game, Breon asked his senior if she wanted to take off the last couple of innings.

The answer was an emphatic, “No.” “That’s just the way she is,” Breon said. “She’s tough. She’s a tough kid. ... That’s the sign of a warrior.”

“I gut it out,” said Klinefelter, who has often worn a knee brace this season. “I try not to let anything affect me.”

Given the way she’s been playing, you can’t blame Klinefelter for wanting to stay on the field. She’s hitting a team-leading .423, with six home runs and a team-leading 29 RBIs.

The physically imposing senior is one of the most dangerous and clutch hitters in the state. Her three-run homer and RBI double helped the Lady Eagles beat Philipsburg- Osceola 7-4 in the District 6 title game. She also belted a two-run homer in the bottom of the sixth to hand the Lady Mounties their only other loss of the season 2-1.

“She’s great,” Parsons said. “She’s so clutch. With the bases loaded, two on, or whatever, she’s always there to pick people up. And even if she does bad, she always picks herself up, we pick her up and then she goes out on the field and does her thing behind the plate.”

Big things were also expected from Klinefelter, who transferred to BEA after batting .426 as a freshman at Bellefonte. The transition was a smooth one with her new teammates.

“It actually wasn’t that bad because I knew a lot of people over here already,” Klinefelter recalled. “I knew Megan Shaw and Janelle Poorman really well because I played summer ball with them.

“As the year went on ... it was like I was here all of my life. Everyone welcomed me in. It was like a whole new family.”

The big challenge came adapting to hitting philosophies at BEA.

“As a sophomore when she first came over to Bald Eagle, we really knew we had some work cut out with her hitting mechanics,” Breon said. “We weren’t happy with her hitting mechanics at all. Honestly, it’s really taken until this year to get that imbedded into her head by not rolling on her back ankle and collapsing on her side.”

“I learned everything over there (in Bellefonte) since in I was in Little League,” Klinefelter said. “Switching from that to this, it was completely different. It wasn’t that bad and I think I’ve finally caught on to it.”

Klinefelter’s average has always been well above .350, but Breon said that she’d often overcome mechanical flaws with superior athleticism.

“That’s what she’s gotten by on — she’s always been bigger than everybody, stronger than everybody,” he said. “If she could just hit the ball, she was just strong enough to hit the ball hard. She wasn’t really relying on good mechanics.”

Klinefelter agrees. “It’s not all about being the biggest, toughest, strongest kid out there,” she said. “You’ve got to do the fundamentals and if you have the athleticism then you’re set.”

As her average attests, she’s applied those mechanics well this season. With it, her power has returned. She ended a 11/ 2 season drought with his homer in the 2-1 win

over P-O and then went on a tear down the stretch as BEA won 13 of its last 14 games.

She’s one of the few hitters who are just as dangerous with two strikes as being ahead in the count.

“She’s matured every year,” Breon said. “This year she’s stepped it up as far as being a big-time hitter. She seems to do better when the pressure is on her. When she gets two strikes on her, she’s a pretty good hitter.”

“If I have two strikes on me, I get a little more defensive,” Klinefelter said. “I try to calm down, relax and hit a ball if it’s there.”

In addition to powerful hitting, Klinefelter has been solid on defense. She’s overcome the disappointment of a throwing error and a passed ball that led to two Loyalsock runs in last season’s 3-2 loss in eight innings of the PIAA title game.

Klinefelter has come to terms with each miscue.

“Last year, I didn’t have very many passed balls and I happened to have one in the state game which ended up costing us the game,” she said. “Ever since then it’s been haunting me. I know that it was a big mistake, and I’ve been trying to work at it this year and I haven’t had that many passed balls.

“Life is all about making mistakes and learning from them,” Klinefelter added. “There’s no way you can learn from a mistake if you don’t make them. Everybody makes them. Not everybody’s life is perfect.”

There’s also more to the position than catching and throwing. It was never more evident than in the PIAA semifinals. With BEA clinging to a 1-0 lead, Klinefelter went out to the mound because she thought Shaw was nervous and had rushed her first two pitches of the inning. After getting a chuckle from Klinefelter, Shaw retired the side on three straight groundouts.

“She saw something that Meg might need to take a little break, take a deep breath and think about it,” Breon said. “It calmed her down a little bit. That’s a sign of leadership. That’s the sign of a good catcher and what a good catcher should be doing.”

“I love having her catch for me,” Shaw said. “I have total confidence in everything she does.”

Klinefelter and teammate Granite will both take their softball talents to Northampton Community College in Bethlehem next fall. Both plan to take mortuary science, a two-year program.

Through Granite’s suggestion, Klinefelter became interested in the career. After shadowing Jim Wetzler of Wetzler Funeral Home in Miles-burg in November, she decided it was something she could do for a living.

She and Granite hope to be roommates and teammates at Northampton.

“She and I have become really good friends,” Klinefelter said. “She’s fun to be around. She’s a fun person to be with and I’m glad that we’re both going there to play and going for the same studies and we can help each other out.”

Maybe they’ll challenge a few of the numbers that former Lady Eagle great Janess Lyle put up at Northampton. Lyle, the director of funeral services at Wetzler Funeral Home in Bellefonte, hit .550 with a 1.103 slugging percentage in a 40-0 season in 2005.

Those numbers can wait until the fall. The goal now is the gold in Shippensburg. And aside from a courtesy runner, you can bet Klinefelter won’t come off the field.

“It’s something I wish everybody could experience in their lifetime,” she said of the PIAA finals. “Last year, even though we lost, it was still great being down there and playing as a team and knowing that you were one of the top two in the state.

“... I think we’re really ready for this game. We’ve been there. We’ve had the experience of being there. We know what to expect.”