Blessed with speed

TUSCALOOSA | Brittany Rogers has scored from first base on a routine single to right field. She’s tagged up at second to score on a sacrifice fly.

(Video breakdown of 2008 NCAA Tuscaloosa Regionals at bottom of story)

The University of Alabama’s center fielder from Dacula, Ga., has already set the school career record for stolen bases, even though she’s not even finished with her junior season. She leads the nation in steals and runs scored. She roams the outfield with a seemingly limitless range, snagging fly balls from behind second base and shortstop or running them down on the warning track far afield in left or right.

The Crimson Tide’s slap-hitting leadoff batter, who carries a .433 average, just might be the fastest player in college softball.

“I’d say she’s one of the fastest I’ve ever seen,” said South Carolina’s Joyce Compton, who has won more than 1,000 games in her 26 years as a head coach. “She doesn’t just try to get to the next base. She tries to get as many bases as she can get.”

How fast is she?

“As fast as God wants me to be,” Rogers said. “Honestly, as fast as it takes for me to do whatever they ask me to do.”

When Alabama assistant coach Alyson Habetz first saw Rogers on a recruiting visit, Rogers hit a ground ball to the pitcher and still beat it out for a base hit. Habetz knew this player was special.

“She does everything right that you can’t coach and everything wrong that you can coach,” Habetz told UA head coach Patrick Murphy.

Said Murphy, “You can’t coach speed, but you can teach fundamentals. She just needed a little help with her technique, but the athleticism was definitely there.

“Brittany has the pure speed. Everybody scouts us and everybody knows.”

Stopwatch doesn’t lie

The evidence of Rogers’ speed isn’t just anecdotal. Murphy put a stopwatch on Rogers last fall and timed her at 2.6 seconds flat running the 60 feet from home plate to first base. That translates to nearly 16 mph. The average Major League Baseball player, according to a study published in the Journal of Exercise Physiology, covers the longer 90-foot distance from home to first base in 4.32 seconds, a rate of 14.2 mph.

By comparison, Caitlin Lowe, leadoff hitter for the U.S. Olympic team, is considered by most experts to be the fastest softball player in the world. Lowe, a left-handed slap hitter like Rogers, has been clocked at 2.55 seconds from home to first, according to her coaches on the U.S. team. Natasha Watley, the second-speediest player on the U.S. team, makes it to first in 2.67 seconds.

There is one difference in the recorded speeds. Murphy timed all his players from the right-handed batter’s box, a couple of feet farther away, so he could compare their speeds. Rogers’ true speed from the left-handed batter’s box hasn’t been measured.

Murphy coached another member of the U.S. team, Kelly Kretschman, when she played at Alabama. It was Kretschman’s school record for stolen bases that Rogers broke earlier this season.

“Kretschman was great around the bases,” Murphy said. “She was an instinctive base runner. Kretschman was game smart, had game speed, the best we’ve ever had, but Brittany is the fastest. In a footrace, Brittany would win.”

Karen Johns, a former Alabama assistant who is on the coaching staff of the U.S. Olympic team, has never put a stopwatch on Rogers, but she has watched the player develop over the past three seasons.

“My guess is she’s in that Natasha Watley range, which is world-class speed,” Johns said. “That is very, very difficult to defend.”

Fast from birth

Rogers has always been fast. Her father noticed it when she was still a toddler.

“She didn’t crawl much when she was a baby,” Anthony Rogers said. “When she planted her foot on the ground and stood up straight, she was on the go. She was up walking and running.”

That’s why Anthony Rogers started lining up races for his daughter in the park when she was starting grade school. Until around the time she was 14, he would challenge local boys to beat her in a dash.

“Most of the little boys that was at the park were always bragging that they could run,” he said. “I would say, ‘What if a girl could do this better than you?’ I would take them up on it.

“I don’t think it was many times that she lost. I doubt she lost more than a handful of times. I used to do it all the time. She was always up for the challenge.”

Brittany Rogers remembers those races.

“We’d go to the park and he’d put me up against boys,” she said. “He really did. Sometimes they definitely beat me, but it was fun.

“I guess he saw it back then. Thanks, Dad.”

Brittany Rogers used her speed to play baseball with those boys in the park and on the basketball court, but track and field somehow never entered the picture.

“She was never interested in it,” Anthony Rogers said. “Every sport she was interested in, we tried. Except for football. We probably would have tried that, too, but her mother wouldn’t let me.”

In high school, Brittany Rogers decided to focus on softball. Her speed attracted attention from recruiters, but she had a lot to learn after she got to Alabama.

Learning the game

Rogers came to the Capstone with raw velocity and talent, but had to learn how to put it to use, especially in the outfield.

“There were a lot of times when she was a freshman when she would make a bad read or a bad cut,” Murphy said.

Habetz had to school Rogers on the rudiments of playing defense.

“She’s always pressed the outfielders on reading the pitch after getting the signal and realizing where that pitch is going and playing the odds,” Rogers said. “It’s all about anticipating where the ball’s going to go off the pitch.”

Now Rogers is able to get the jump on fly balls and cover the ground necessary to track them down. She’s robbed a home run this season, taking it from over the wall, and made numerous sliding and diving catches to take hits away from batters. She covers territory from directly behind the infield to deep in left and right fields, running like a gazelle to make difficult plays look routine.

Her improvement in the field was recognized when she was named to the Southeastern Conference All-Defensive Team this season.

“This fall we were talking about just putting both left and right [fielders] on the lines and letting her take the other two-thirds of the field,” Murphy said. “She makes more catches look easy than anybody else because she gets there so quick. Most fielders would have to dive for the balls that she’s catching every game.”

While she’s had to master the art of fielding, Brittany Rogers was always a natural running the bases.

“She’s had the green light since she’s been here,” Murphy said. “I trust her. I think she makes good judgments of when to go and when not to go. I can’t even think of a time when she made the wrong decision and got thrown out.”

Rogers has stolen 53 bases this season and been thrown out just four times, but she said she’s had to learn that aspect of the game, too.

“Speed helps, most definitely,” she said, “but as I’ve learned here, making the right cuts on the base and knowing when to go and on what balls to run is very important. Also checking your base coaches, because often I’m not looking at where the ball went. I wouldn’t know when to go.”

Johns has been impressed as she’s seen Rogers improve with her bat.

“When she was younger, her freshman and sophomore years, she was pretty one-dimensional,” the U.S. assistant said. “She pretty much relied on the infield hit.

“Now she’s more versatile. She can soft slap. She can drag bunt. She can hit it to either side. She has more power. She’s a terror.”

Pressuring defenses

The kind of speed Rogers possesses puts pressure on opponents. Fielders trying to throw her out often rush things, which has allowed her to reach safely on errors a dozen times this season.

“I tell her every day in practice if I can try to get her out I ought to be OK with anybody in the world, because if you can get out Brittany Rogers you can get out anybody,” Alabama third baseman Kelley Montalvo said. “Every third baseman, every infielder, I know what they feel when she’s hitting. We get into this panic mode because she’s so fast. We lose control, we don’t get a good grip and we make an error.

“Going against her is impossible. If it’s high enough and has the right bounce and the right spin, she’s on. It’s automatic.”

Said UA pitching coach Vann Stuedeman, “We always say speed creates chaos. She’s definitely on the minds of other coaches.”

And once Rogers reaches first base, the real trouble for defenses begins. Pitchers, catchers and infielders have to change their strategy to cope with the threat of her speed.

Hear the words of Jacksonville State coach Jana McGinnis, who recruited Rogers out of high school: “You’re not only having to worry about how to pitch the batter that’s standing in the batter’s box and getting her out, you’ve got to watch [Rogers] stealing. I tell you, she really makes you think.

“You just hope to keep her off the bases, which is difficult to do. If she gets on base, you hope it’s with two outs and somebody in front of her.”

Having Rogers on base also impacts pitching strategies to the batters behind Rogers in the lineup, making them more effective.

“It changes your whole approach, how you use your off-speed pitches, because it puts so much pressure on your catcher to throw her out,” Johns said.

Mind of a base runner

Rogers is capable of hitting line drives and long flies, but she usually relies on the slap-hitting approach of driving the ball into the ground and trying to beat out the hit to first base before a fielder can throw her out.

When she puts a ball in play, her mind is nearly blank.

“Get there,” she said. “That’s what I’m thinking.

“When I’m running to first, I’m looking straight ahead. I’m trying to see if the first baseman is stretching out trying to get the ball or not.”

In a base-stealing situation, her thoughts are similar.

“I’m trying to see if the second baseman or shortstop is covering because sometimes you have to slide differently,” she said. “Oftentimes if the second baseman runs in front of you, you have to make a decision really fast. I’m just looking ahead to see what they’re doing.”

If Rogers makes it to third, she’s ready to pounce on nearly any ball put into play or any mistake by the pitcher or catcher that puts the ball on the ground.

“If it gets booted someplace, I’m looking for it,” she said. “If it’s in the outfield, I’m tagging for sure.”

Said Murphy, “The more she gets on base, the better off for us. She needs to get on.”

Rogers has stolen home on double steals, but she has no desire to try it without cover. Even speed has limitations.

“Oh, no, you really have to be smart at home,” she said. “I’m not Superwoman, let me tell you.”

Blessed with speed

Rogers knows she was blessed with speed, and that’s exactly how she looks at it.

“I know it’s so weird and it may be a cliche, but I show up and let the Holy Spirit do the work,” she said. “I don’t say I’m going to hit it right here and I’m going to run like this because it’s not me. It’s not. I’m just out there playing ball, trying to put it in play.”

Murphy has seen Rogers play since scouting her in high school, but often he’s still amazed by her feats of speed. He marvels at a hit she beat out on a routine grounder to second base, with the defender fielding the ball as Rogers motored up the line.

“It was a one-hop,” Murphy said, “and the [fielder] underhanded it. As soon as she started to bring her arm back in the underhand motion, I said to myself, ‘She’s got a chance.’ She was safe by probably half a step.”

All Alabama’s head coach can do is smile and shake his head when he ponders how Rogers’ fleetness impacts the game.

“Defense, definitely offense, on the bases, all over the place, it’s huge,” he said.

Reach Tommy Deas at tommy.deas@tuscaloosanews.com or at 205-722-0224.