Peterman returns as softball's leader

On most teams, the seniors provide leadership and guidance for the rest of the team, leading by example.

The softball team has only one senior, but the example that No. 1 pitcher Sarah Peterman provides is enough to inspire the whole team.

"I remember at one practice last year during spring break, a ball took a bad bounce and hit [Peterman's] hand," sophomore pitcher Brie Galicinao said. "She shouldn't have even been playing, but she threw and won the game. She was in an amazing amount of pain, but she did what she needed to for the team."

Although Peterman now provides the young softball team with stability and experience, her career did not start out smoothly at Princeton. She sat out her entire freshman year with an obscure foot injury.

"I'm sure it was the only time in her life she didn't play softball in the spring," head coach Cindy Cohen said. "I think it helped her realize how precious her career is, and hopefully her teammates learned from that."

When she arrived on campus, Peterman had a nagging pain in her foot. The pain did not go away, it was diagnosed as a stress fracture, and her foot was put in a cast for two months.

But that didn't fix the problem or heal the pain. Doctors thought that Peterman might be suffering from tendonitis. Finally, a specialist correctly diagnosed the injury as an osteoid osteoma — a benign tumor inside her bone.

The then-freshman had surgery, and her foot was put in another cast for three more months.

"I had high expectations and had hoped to contribute," Peterman said. "It was very hard to watch them play, especially since I'd never been injured seriously for that length of time before."

But she did not let that injury set her back, and by last year she was the leading pitcher on the team, garnering Second Team All-Ivy honors with a 1.01 ERA.

"She kept us pretty much in every game she pitched," Cohen said. "That's all you can ask of a pitcher."

Last season every other pitcher on the staff was a freshman, meaning that Peterman's leadership this year is only an extension of the mentoring relationship already established.

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"She was under a ton of pressure last year, but she handled it like a champ," Galicinao said. "Hopefully this year we can help her out more."

"As a pitcher, you grow up in situations of pressure, so I was not unused to it," Peterman said. "It's something you just learn to deal with."

The sophomore pitchers — Galicinao, Dana Freiser and Sarah Jane White — feel a special closeness to Peterman, and the four of them have developed a bond.

"As pitchers, we spend so much time together in the bullpen anyway that it made it easy for us just to hang out under other circumstances," Peterman said. "I almost felt like an older sister."

Peterman knows how hard an athlete's freshman year can be, and she tried to help out her fellow hurlers. Sophomore Sarah Jane White also spent some time on the sidelines with a foot injury last year, and Peterman was there to help her through.

"It was nice to have her there, because I knew she knew how I felt," White said. "But it was not just me — she looked out for all of us freshmen."

This season, with one more year of experience under their belt, the sophomores hope to take some of the pressure off Peterman.

But the team knows that if they need her, she will be there.