GOING TO GREAT LENGTHS TO SUCCEED : Titans’ Clark Adjusts So She Can Measure Up

Connie Clark of Cal State Fullerton has been facing hitters from 40 feet away for about the last seven years. So imaging her surprise when she went to the park last September to practice sand discovered that, under an NCAA rule change, the pitching box had been moved back three feet.

Lengthening her softball world by three feet could have turned it upside down.

“I could tell the difference looking at it right at first, and I was worried,” said Clark, a senior who won 20 of 22 games and had the country’s lowest earned-run average (0.18) last year as her team won the NCAA World Series.

Clark was concerned that the extra distance would hurt her riseball, which jumps up at the plate, causing batters to swing under it.

“If I don’t have my riseball, I don’t know what I’m going to do,” Clark said. “I rely on that pitch a lot more than my other pitches. Even when I have a full count, I throw it.”

Now, 19 games into the season, Clark seems to have made a complete adjustment. She has won all 11 games she has started and her ERA (0.11) is lower than last season’s. Her curveball finds the strike zone regularly, and she confuses batters with her changeup, a pitch she plans to use a lot more this season. Still, the riseball is her specialty.

Clark wasn’t alone in her concern over the rule change.

Judi Garman, Fullerton coach, said the change in distance has frustrated pitchers, some of whom will participate today in the first eight games of the four-day Pony Invitational Softball Tournament at Cal State Fullerton.

“It hasn’t affected Connie, but I understand it has affected 99% of the pitchers in the country,” said Garman, whose Titans are 17-2 this season and ranked first in the country.

Kathy Van Wyk, the Titans’ pitching coach, says many pitchers are one-dimensional, throwing only fastballs. These pitchers are especially hurt by the new distance.

“I pulled our pitchers and catchers aside and told them they have done an excellent job,” said Van Wyk, who pitched for the Titans in 1982. “When you compare runs scored against runs we’ve scored, our pitchers and catchers have done an excellent job. I know because I’ve pitched from 43 feet myself.”

Moving the pitcher’s box from 40 to 43 feet was designed to five a batter more time to judge which way curves would curve, where fastballs would rip the strike zone. And it could result in more hits in a game dominated by pitching, making the games more exciting.

Clark’s progress was especially evident recently against No. 2-ranked Texas A&M;, one of the 15 teams entered in the tournament.

“It was the first complete seven innings I saw her throw, including last year’s World Series,” said Van Wyk. “She’s a game pitcher; when you get her mad, watch out. Her pitches are hard and right in the strike zone. Sometimes it’s as if you have to make her mad.”

Getting angry is one change Clark can handle.

“I usually don’t have trouble being too excited or nervous, I have problems being too relaxed,” she said as she helped teammates erect bleachers and mend fences the day before the tournament. “I like anxiety; I’d rather play Texas A&M; every day.”

Rules may change. Mounds may move. But in an ever-changing sports world, Clark says one part of her game will still be the same.

“When I want to get that third strike,” she says, “I usually throw the rise.”

At least till the next rule’s passed.