Wellington senior Heather Bankston is unique in Lorain County. She is forgoing her senior high school season to play college softball.
This is for a couple of reasons. First, she is also a student at Lorain County Community College, where her course load makes her a full-time student. If she played her senior year at Wellington, she’d lose a season of eligibility at LCCC.
Second, after four seasons of club-level competition, softball has become a varsity sport at the college for the first time.
Her decision is unusual, but the reason for it is easy.
“Since I’m a PSEO (post-secondary education) student, I can go to college while I’m still in high school,” Bankston said. “So I decided to do that. In order to play softball at the intercollegiate level, I had to have 12 credits already. Last semester I took 17. This semester I’m taking 16, so I have enough credits to play.
“I didn’t want to give up a year of college eligibility, so I gave up a year of eligibility for the high school,” she said. “Since I’ll be playing here next year, it’s either play one year or two years and forfeit high school, so I chose to forfeit high school.”
An intercollegiate varsity program in the area is appealing because of the wealth of available softball talent. And in a county where fastpitch softball seems to grow in popularity almost daily, who better to coach the Commodores than the veteran Dave Moore.
Moore, in his fifth season at LCCC, has coached summer-league teams in and around South Amherst for 19 years. His Ohio Girls Softball Organization teams have won five state championships, four in a row at one point.
Moore said Tom Szabo, the LCCC intercollegiate compliance officer, was instrumental in gaining membership for the program in the National Junior College Athletic Association.
“He did a lot to get us to the NJCAA level,” Moore said. “We’re also members of the Ohio Community College Athletic Conference. The others are Owens (Toledo), Lakeland (Kirtland), Tri-C West (Parma) and Clark State (Springfield). We’ve got 30 games on the schedule this year. That’s actually kind of light because 20 of them are conference games.”
For now, the numbers are small. Moore has 11 players on the roster, all from the area, 10 from Lorain County and one from North Olmsted. Most home games will be at LaGrange Community Park. Some might be at Sliman’s Diamond in Amherst, where the college played as a club team.
“The nice thing is we can add to the roster anytime we want,” Moore said. “We have a roster now, but if somebody wants to come play and she’s got the credits and the grade-point average, I can put her on the roster and she can play tomorrow.”
In a way, a small roster makes his job easier. In other ways, it makes it not so easy because there’s not much depth. For instance, the team is short on pitching. In fact, Bankston is pretty much the pitching staff.
“Heather’s definitely going to be carrying the load,” Moore said. “We’re hoping she stays healthy. For instance, this past weekend we had eight games scheduled because everything is doubleheaders.
“If we had 25 girls come out and I had to cut eight or 10, it would be different and we could be more demanding. But at this point, with the numbers, we have to sort of feel our way along. Most of the girls don’t need much instruction and that’s good, because I think they play better when they’re not under stress.
“If they’re having fun, they’re going to play their normal game and not worry about making mistakes. Over the last couple years, we’ve had some very good times, with long rides up to Ann Arbor (to play Michigan’s club team) and places like that. The players have always gotten along real well.
“For the last three years, the mix of girls we’ve had has been great,” Moore said. “The group we have right now, they all blend very well. There’s none of that tension or friction. And they’re about the best recruiters we’ve got. Next year, our turnout will be even better.”
The difference between the high school and community-college levels of softball isn’t great, said Courtney Piwinski, who played on Keystone’s 2006 state championship team.
“Playing for the college, there aren’t that many girls playing so we get a lot more playing time,” said Piwinski, a catcher and outfielder. “We have doubleheaders every time we play, so we’re always playing. Last year, I had a little hitting slump toward the beginning, but I picked it up as we started playing more games.
“We’re practicing a lot more,” Piwinski said of the upgrade to varsity status. “Also, we get to make up games so we should get to play all of them this season.”
Contact Bob Daniels at 329-7135
or ctsports@chroniclet.com. 

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