Whoever says women are not tough will change their mind when they meet sophomore softball player Maria Sorrentino. She played t-ball and baseball with boys growing up before she made the switch to softball.
“It was nice always standing out,” Sorrentino said. “People notice (you) quickly when there’s only one girl out there. I grew up in a neighborhood full of boys, so I was used to always being one of them.”
While some others might have been a little uneasy being the only one out there, Sorrentino used it as motivation to be a better competitor.
“I think that’s why I’m so competitive, because I was always trying to out-do the boys, because that’s the last thing a boy wants to have done, (and that) is to be beat by a girl,” Sorrentino said.
She said her older brother, by two years, was another driving force into being a more competitive person and a better overall athlete.
All the hard work paid off and after her junior year of high school she committed to Eastern.
She made it to a few camps at Eastern and said she felt comfortable with the campus. Last season as a freshman Sorrentino played 37 games, starting 20 of them. She had nine hits and two RBIs. Her best work was on the bases, as one of four players used as a pinch runner. She stole five bases on eight attempts.
This season she would have likely kept the same role, but that changed March 20 when she was hit in the face by a pitch thrown by Jacksonville State junior pitcher Ashley Eliasson.
Sixteen pitches have hit the Panthers this season, but none as bad as the one that hit Sorrentino; this one broke her jaw in three places and ended her season.
She still can describe the play just like it happened yesterday.
“I watched the first two pitches go by because they were both low and outside and that’s my least favorite pitch,” Sorrentino said. “The third pitch was high and next pitch was in the dirt, so now the count is 2-2. The next pitch was a curveball and it came right at my face. Since I’m a slapper, I’m already running towards the ball, so there was no way I could get out of the way.
“The ball hit me and I immediately bit down and I could feel my whole jaw shift down, like half of it was no longer connected or something. My back teeth on the bottom right side of my mouth were so pushed up that when I bit down there was about a centimeter gap between my top and bottom front teeth.”
The impact of the blow didn’t affect her as much as the amount of blood did.
“The blood scared me the most, but I was honestly a little excited that we finally got a baserunner on,” Sorrentino said.
For the past five weeks, she has had to eat everything through a straw, a “liquid diet” as she calls it. She has lost 15 pounds since the injury.
“I had a lot of people who helped me,” Sorrentino said. “A lot of parents gave me shakes; the strength coaches gave me some cases of muscle milk, so I basically lived on strawberry shakes. When I did eat food I relied on my Magic Bullet and that was a life saver. I blended a lot of soup (I would have to add about a cup of water). I tried a few strange things – PB&J sandwich, pizza and cereal – but I didn’t like most of the real food I blended up.”
Aside from eating, she couldn’t practice for four weeks and had difficulty talking with others because it was hard to understand her at times. It took her about 10 minutes to brush her teeth.
“There was nothing I could do to change it, so there was no reason to dwell on it,” Sorrentino said. “I knew it was only going to be six weeks of my life and I had too many other things to do and worry about. So crying about it was useless.”
She is not letting the injury slow her down. This summer she is traveling to Spain for six weeks to study abroad with teammate Hayley Pieper.
“Maria and I have thought about this since the beginning of this school year,” Pieper said. “We are both Spanish minors and would practice speaking with each other, whether it was on the field during warm ups, on the bus, or just hanging out. Now that everything is official we are really looking forward to our six weeks there, going to the university, and spending time with our host family.”
Sorrentino said this will be her first time out of the country and only her second time on a plane, but being with Pieper has helped calm her nerves some, and she cannot wait for the adventure she will have in Salamanca, Spain.
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