Complementary pieces

It would be challenging to find a pair of pitchers who get the job done as differently as Jessica Perley and Kate Nash, a pair of seniors on the Vestavia Hills High School softball team.

Perley uses power. The righty has a fastball that eclipses 60 miles per hour and works both sides of the plate to keep batters off balance and occasionally simply blow them away.

“She’s got speed like a demon,” Nash said.

Nash uses finesse and movement. She has no fantasies of overpowering opposing hitters, but instead features a drop curve that could be described as “nasty,” in a good way.

“I have a drop curve, and if they hit it, it’s usually going to be a ground ball, so it makes it easier for the infield,” Nash said.

Perley is right-handed. Nash is left-handed. Combine the two in the same game, and it presents an extremely difficult circumstance for lineups.

“We want to split games,” Perley said. “She’ll start, and they get used to her speed and her rhythm and her coming at them from the left-handed angle, and they get used to everything being down.”

Once Perley enters a game behind Nash, the timing is tough to get a handle on.

“They won’t be used to my movement going side to side,” Perley said. “We help each other.”

That is not to say that either pitcher is opposed or not capable of completing games themselves, but having the other always at the ready removes the pressure of being the only option.

“You get to split that pressure, and the dependency they have on you,” Nash said. “It’s nice to depend on somebody else and have them depend on you as well. You get to split that leadership.”

Perley and Nash’s relationship is a microcosm of the entire Rebels’ roster and how well the team functions as a unit, a characteristic that has been repeated often throughout the last two years.

“We know each other and how we work,” Perley said of the two pitchers. “We like each other. I like everyone on this team. We have really good chemistry.”

For softball pitchers, there are many variables that must be in sync to maximize their abilities on the mound, even those beyond the rest of the pitching staff and team chemistry.

For Perley, many of her obstacles are mental, including how much she demands of herself as a self-admitted “perfectionist.”

“I’m very hard on myself,” she said. “I put all the blame on myself, and I’ll make myself sick over it.”

At times, Perley attempts to be too perfect, and that can come back to bite her if she tries too hard to keep opposing batters from making contact.

“I try to get too fancy sometimes,” she said. “I’ll get away from the fastball too much and then you start to lose your velocity.”

Another variable Nash and Perley deal with is the catcher situation. The Rebels are in a great position with their backstop, as Audrey Meloun drew rave reviews from both pitchers.

“She’s a boss back there,” Nash said. “It’s so nice having her back there.”

Audrey Meloun and her twin sister, Kate Meloun, have signed to play collegiately at West Liberty University in Wheeling, West Virginia, and Audrey Meloun allows both pitchers full belief to throw any pitch.

“I’m confident enough to throw [my drop curve], and confidence is a key thing to throwing my pitches,” Nash said. 

“Without a good catcher, you can’t throw it,” Perley said. “If I’m going to throw a drop ball, if I’m scared that she’s not going to block it, I can’t throw it to the best of my ability.”

Perley, Nash and Audrey Meloun also work together throughout games. All three pay particular attention to opposing hitters’ tendencies and draw on past memories to formulate a game plan with familiar batters.

“I try to read their body stance and language,” Perley said. “You can tell by their feet what they like and what they don’t like. If they take the first pitch, a lot of times they’ll have their weight on their heels, so you watch that, and know what you can throw and what you can’t throw.”

Drop balls tend to induce more ground balls than any other pitch, and Perley and Nash not only must trust their catcher, but also that their infield will make the plays required when the ball is indeed put in play.

The Rebels return the entirety of their starting infield from a season ago, with Southern Union signee RaeAnn King at third base, Samford commit Merritt Cahoon at shortstop, Kate Meloun at second base and Hannah Grace Roden or Savannah Hayes at first base.

“That makes me feel so much better, because our infield is the same people,” Perley said. “I’ve seen what they can do, and I have complete faith in them.”

Nash and Perley were a large part of Vestavia’s success last season, which resulted in a third-place finish at the state tournament. The pitchers combined to hurl nearly 270 innings and win 23 games. 

Perley’s bat will also play a role for the Rebels this spring. In 2016, she hit four home runs and drove in 18 runs, and she said she believes she can perform much better with the stick in 2017.

That state tournament run gave the Rebels a small taste of the ultimate goal last May. They want a much bigger serving this time around, and have the arms to do so.

“We’ve been working so hard since August; I hope we’re not going to stop until May,” Nash said.