Michell is grateful to continue her softball career at St. Peters

COVENTRY — Coventry softball senior Elizabeth Mitchell ended her career as a state champion, where she pitched a complete game in the team's 16-3 win over Holy Cross with a home run.

While her high school softball career is over, Mitchell will continue to play the sport she loves at the Division 1 level at St. Peters, where she committed to in August.

However, she thought at first she wouldn’t have a chance at playing at the Division One level, so she was ecstatic when she got that opportunity. She said she’s super grateful for the opportunity to continue playing the sport she loves for another four years.

Although she had offers from the University of Bridgeport and Eastern, Mitchell said St. Peters was where she wanted to be after an official visit.

“It was the coaching, and I really loved the campus,” Mitchell said. “I’ve never been in the city before. The city was definitely a change of scenery and gave me the type of freedom to meet all these new people. I had offers from the University of Bridgeport and Eastern, and I just said that’s too close to home. I was grateful I got that offer. “

Mitchell said that St. Peters is getting a player who will always have a positive attitude and cheer somebody on.

Although Mitchell was a great hitter and pitcher in college, she said the college level will be a whole different game.

“I’m going to see faster pitching and movement,” Mitchell said. “During high school, it was easy since we had already seen that pitcher. I haven’t seen anybody yet, so hopefully, I get a few at-bats. I want to take advantage of that my freshman year.”

Mitchell said she will also have to adjust to the umpire's strike zone when she pitches next year. In high school, she said that some umpires have a high zone where they will call strikes above the letters and at the waist level.

At the college level, she said, the strike zone will be much smaller since they will call it a ball if it touches the corner.

With the college hitters being more talented, Mitchell said she wants to increase her speed and work on her mechanics.

“I want to be as close to perfect,” Mitchell said. “I definitely want to be competitive in the MAC conference. I doubt I’ll be a strikeout pitcher. I want to be one of those scrappy pitchers where you get a pop out of me. I definitely won’t be overpowering because these girls have seen better pitching than what they’re going to see out of me. I just need to keep them off balance.”

Mitchell said she needs to pitch more around the zone to be successful at the next level. Specifically, she said she has to be able to hit her spots with the change-up in every location possible.

In addition, she said she needs to be able to throw her rise ball in three different locations, low, middle, and up, to succeed. She added she will also have to throw some pitches out of the zone to see if they chase to determine if the hitter has good discipline.

Mitchell has multiple goals that she would like to achieve in her freshman year, both on the mound and at the plate.

On the mound, Mitchell said she wants to get some pitching time in her first year. She said she wants to pitch at least 50 innings and have 80 strikeouts.

At the plate, Mitchell said she wants to contribute in any way to help the team win. She said the most important thing is to produce with runners in scoring position.

She also added that she wants to bat .300.

Lastly, Mitchell wants to win an All-Conference title at St. Peters since she didn’t achieve that in high school.

“I want to win a conference championship while at St. Peters,” Mitchell said.