State College grad Hannah Shields won’t return to pitch another season with Penn State softball
Hannah Shields came back to Penn State to get a top-notch education and finish her softball career at the school she grew up watching as a State College native.
In a cruel way twist of fate, the former will, in part, prevent her from achieving the latter with any sense of finality.
Shields, a pitcher who made 29 appearances in just over a year with the team, is one four seniors on the Penn State softball roster, and like her three classmates, she won’t return for an extra year of eligibility offered by the NCAA after the spring sports season was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Penn State softball coach Amanda Lehotak said all four seniors have their next steps to take academically and professionally, which will prevent them from returning.
“Unfortunately for Penn State softball none of them are coming back,” Lehotak said on a conference call with the media. “Fortunately for them, they all graduate in a couple weeks and they all have jobs or are starting their master’s toward their doctorate in other programs. ... That’s why you come to Penn State. You graduate in four years and you have a job waiting for you if you do your due diligence. ... I think they all have amazing career opportunities that they cannot turn down. It’s incredible how successful they’re going to be in the real world.”
Shields, who played four years at State High, decided to call it a career after plenty of deliberation in order to continue her academic pursuits in Penn State’s nursing school.
“It was definitely a very hard decision,” Shields said. “I absolutely love softball. ... (The nursing program) is only 16 months long, which is very intense studying, and everything else. ... It was a hard decision but I can’t change the commitment I’ve already made to nursing.”
She returned to State College as a junior for her final two years of eligibility after transferring from Delaware State, where she pitched for two years.
In her sophomore season at Delaware State, Shields led the team with seven wins and a 5.27 ERA, pitching 12 complete games including a shutout. But ultimately, she wanted to set herself up to be successful off the softball field and to pursue her nursing career.
“I absolutely loved everyone that I met at my old school,” Shields said. “But it was just time for me to transfer to see what opportunities were out there at another school. Penn State has a huge network after graduation. Ultimately, I need to look out for my career in softball and outside of softball ... Penn State is Penn State and you can’t get that anywhere else.”
The senior’s experience lived up to what she’d hoped it would when she made the decision to transfer, even if it came to an unceremonious and jarring conclusion.
Shields and the rest of the team were at a movie theater together when the news broke that the season would be canceled and the conclusion to her career would come much sooner than expected. She and her teammates were initially in a state of disbelief that it was happening, even though other sporting events were being canceled.
They were forced to come to terms with the decision as a group and are still continuing to grieve together, something Shields said has helped her work through the abrupt end to her college career.
“What’s awesome is that we’re staying together as a team right now,” Shields said. “The softball team right now and the softball community is doing so much for each other to try and help each other out because we’re all going through this. It was all so out of the blue. No one could have expected this.”
Her original decision to come back to State College helped the program because of her deep passion for the school and town she was representing, according to Lehotak, who was disappointed she wouldn’t be able to honor the senior class in a way she felt they deserved.
“I just feel so awful for them,” Lehotak said. “They’ve taken it great. ... They hurt, because they should hurt, but they’ve been great. They’ve been mentally tough through this time. As tough as you can be ... I’m just so sad that I don’t get to honor them on Beard Field like they should be honored. ... They never even got to play one game on Beard Field in their senior year and I think that’s really hard.”
While Lehotak and the softball program won’t be able to honor the seniors on Beard Field, they still intend on honoring the group.
Penn State softball is planning a “virtual Senior Day” for the four seniors during the week leading up to its originally scheduled Senior Day on May 3.
Shields and her teammates may not get to say goodbye on the field where they played together, but she’s still looking forward to the virtual sendoff.
“It’s going to be super exciting that we’re going to be honored in that way,” she said.
This story was originally published April 16, 2020 at 10:53 AM.
