Sarah Pauly Named NPF Player of the Week

July 21, 2006 - By Phil Soto-Ortiz

TUCSON, ARIZ. – When Sarah Pauly takes the pitching circle this weekend at Arizona’s Hi Corbett Field, she will be doing so as the National Pro Fastpitch league’s reigning player of the week.

The Brakettes’ 6-foot 2-inch right-hander earned that distinction by virtue of her 3-0 record and 0.44 ERA in three appearances against the Texas Thunder from July 13 through July 16. Pauly started the first and third games of Connecticut’s four-game series with Texas at Frank DeLuca Hall of Fame Field in Stratford, Conn., and was nearly perfect. She completed both starts, allowing just three hits, no walks and no runs while striking out 12 Texas batters. One of those three hits was a bunt single. She allowed only two baserunners to reach second base, and none reached third.

Pauly came in Sunday to relieve Nikki Myers. She was unable to preserve the Brakettes’ lead as she allowed two singles and her only run of the week, but she earned the victory when the Brakettes scored in the bottom of the seventh on Kelly Kretschman’s single, followed by Denise Denis’ sacrifice bunt and Kellie Wilkerson’s game-winning single.

The win was Pauly’s third of the series and ninth of the season, tying her for the league lead with Amy Harre of Chicago, Christa Williams of Texas and Jocelyn Forest of New England.

Pauly has been one of the most difficult pitchers in the NPF to score against this season, and the task grew even tougher last week, as her ERA plummeted from 1.53 to 1.31, good for second in the league behind only Harre’s mark of 0.89. She also ranks second in the league in strikeouts with 72. Williams leads with 101. She is third in the league with 80 innings pitched, and her 10 complete games lead the league – no other pitcher has more than seven.

Pauly has been the mainstay of a Brakettes team that is ensconced in second place in this, its first season in the NPF. She also posted a 24-8 record and 0.78 ERA for the Brakettes in 2005 in ASA competition, striking out 315 hitters in 216 innings. This comes on the heels of a stellar college career in which she led Texas A&M-Corpus Christi into the NCAA Tournament in each of the three years the Islanders were an NCAA program during her tenure there. Her dominance at the college level culminated with a 37-7 record, 0.56 ERA and 497 strikeouts in 288 innings as she was named the Big South Conference Pitcher of the Year her senior season.

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