Potter Pitches Her Way to Alabama
2/15/2007 12:00:00 AM | Softball
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. ?? Blair Potter is in her senior season with the University of Alabama softball team and realizes she wouldn't be where she is today if it weren't for a stellar pitching performance in 2004. A performance that would lead her to Alabama and a whole new college experience.
Potter, a native of Columbus, Ga., was a sophomore pitcher for Wallace-Dothan Community College at the time and came to Tuscaloosa with her team to participate in the Fall Brawl, a tournament hosted by Alabama. She drew the start for the Lady Govs on Oct. 30 and little did she know she was about to make a big impact on her future.
"I remember I was dreading that game the most out of all the games on the year," said Potter. "All I could think about was that they had Stephanie VanBrakle and she was going to hit home runs. I was really nervous but I just went out there and told the team that we had nothing to lose and to go out there and do our best."
The pitcher Blair went head-to-head with was VanBrakle, who was a two-time All-American and pitched five no-hitters for the Crimson Tide in her collegiate career. Potter got off to a good start, retiring the first two batters before letting a pitch slip away that hit Staci Ramsey. However, Potter was able to close out the inning with a ground ball out.
She settled in to a groove and retired 15 straight batters and at one point had struck out six in a row, something she did often in her career at Wallace-Dothan as she broke the school's strikeout record. She took a no-hitter into the sixth inning along with the lead as the Lady Govs took advantage of a leadoff walk and scored on a single. With two outs in the sixth, Ashley Courtney bunted for the Tide's only hit of the game, breaking up the no-hitter. In the seventh inning, Jordan Praytor drew a leadoff walk but after getting Ramsey to pop out, Potter got Dani Woods to ground out into a double play to end the game.
Potter finished the game with seven innings pitched, one hit allowed, one walk and six strikeouts. She only faced 22 batters in the game and drew the attention of the Alabama coaching staff.
"It was almost like the best try-out you can have when you can't have a try-out," said Alabama head coach Patrick Murphy. "If you play well against us then that's a huge factor in our decision of whether or not we are going to recruit you. Especially as a junior college kid, she looked poised and she never got rattled. She just pitched her game and that was it. She kept herself poised and kept herself balanced. That was the one thing that she did a really good job of, we never knew what was coming next. She was very classy during and after the game."
Alabama pitching coach Vann Stuedeman was particularly impressed with her performance on the mound that day.
"If we couldn't beat her then we wanted her," said Stuedeman. "What I liked the most about that game was that she was fearless. She was determined. She pitched a great game. She went at all of our big hitters and didn't walk a bunch of people. We had come off the World Series that year, so she was pitching against a World Series opponent and it didn't even look like it fazed her. She came inside on us. Most junior college pitchers would stay away and try to get us to keep it in the park. She jammed us and she threw some changeups. That's what I liked about it. It wasn't that she did anything great, it was just the mental part of her game was awesome."
In fact it didn't take long after the game before the Tide coaches started to ask about Potter. Head coach Patrick Murphy called the Wallace-Dothan head coach, Gene Dews, while they were on their way back to Dothan and talked a little bit more about her.
"Coach Murphy called my coach on the way back and I guess he said he wanted me," said Potter. "I talked over the phone with the coaches. I had never come here before. I had only seen the softball field and that is it. I didn't know anything about the school until I got here."
About two weeks later Murphy and his staff decided they were going to try and get her to come to Alabama.
"I talked to her and her head coach," said Murphy. "It helped too that our manager at the time, Travis Williams, had been with them while he was in school at Dothan. He knew the players and knew the coaches so that helped. It was just a case of getting her up here."
Blair had not been recruited that much other than by smaller colleges coming out of her excellent career at Wallace-Dothan. Really the only schools that recruited her out of high school were Wallace-Dothan and Chattahoochee Valley College in Phenix City, Ala. However, she got the opportunity to come to Alabama so she visited campus and decided to come here.
"I came to a couple of games during the NCAA regionals," said Blair. "They took me to the weight room and that was really nice. I didn't really have that many offers right out of junior college; it was more small schools. I was like wow a SEC School. I wanted to come here because a lot of people said, ??No, you would never make it that far.' I think it is great being here now. I can say, ??look what I did,' to all the people who told me that I couldn't do it."
When Blair came to Tuscaloosa she found that being a Division I athlete wasn't all fun and games and was actually a lot harder than playing in junior college.
"I knew it was going to be a challenge," said Blair. "Coming from junior college where we didn't run or lift weights or have study hall, we didn't have any of that in junior college. We just went out and played pretty much."
The adjustment for Blair was hard, especially in the fall because she was used to just going to practice and throwing, not all the other things that demanded a lot from her physically and mentally.
"Blair had come from a situation where all she did was pitch," said Stuedeman. "She was the star, the apple of everyone's eye. She makes good grades. She is a great kid to be around. She smiles and is happy all the time. She probably had never been pressed beyond what she was doing naturally. When she came here and she joined a staff that already had some very good pitching, we asked her to step it up with some things that she wasn't normally used to."
One of the hardest things to catch up on for Blair was lifting weights. She found it hard to keep up with some of the other players on the team because she wasn't used to doing it. It got to be so hard on her that she went to her coaches and told them about the problems she was having.
"I can remember last year she wrote an email to me and said she was overwhelmed," said Murphy. "She didn't know if she could do it. I'm sure she had thoughts of quitting, but she never did and she never gave up."
Blair's teammates helped her throughout the entire process and encouraged her to stick with it. That encouragement helped her to learn to like running and lifting weights and she even wrote down running as a hobby on her Women's College World Series questionnaire.
"Last year I struggled a lot in the weight room, but a lot of the girls said just keep going it is going to pay off and it did," said Potter. "This year I came back in better shape and it was a lot easier. It was a challenge and I am just glad I stuck with it."
Her coach would agree with her and said it was a complete turnaround from the year before for Potter. He said she went from never running or lifting to doing great on all of the fall conditioning tests.
"This summer it was amazing," said Murphy. "I asked her what she did and she said ??Run and lift weights'. It's just a surprise that she is definitely in the best shape of her life. She was terrific this year. She took the workout and did great things all summer. I think she just realized what she needed to do to be a better Division I pitcher. I think she's done it."
Her pitching coach agrees and thinks that the first ever left-handed pitcher in school history also has the best change-up the program has ever seen and is even better now than she was when she dazzled the coaches with a 1-0 victory over Alabama in 2004.
"I think she had never been pushed or pressed to realize the full talent that she had," said Stuedeman. "It was a little bit of an adjustment and struggle. To her credit she has risen above all of it and gotten the best out of what Alabama softball has to offer. She has really utilized the tools that she has never had. This year she has a really good mindset in her approach. She is mentally tougher and that has to do with being in the weight room and lifting weights, thinking she can do it. It has created some mental toughness deeper than what I saw in the game she pitched against us and beat us. Those kinds of things have taken her to the next level."
Blair currently has an undefeated career record at Alabama at 6-0 in 19 appearances. She has also pitched extremely well in the place where she had such a great game two years ago, the Alabama Softball Complex. At home she has accumulated four of her six wins and recorded her first career shutout with a one-hitter against Drake on March 5 last season. She will be honored this weekend on Blair Potter Day at prior to the Tide's game against Toledo at 1 p.m. on Saturday.
