Cat Osterman in unique role of pitching against the team she coaches

By Blake Jackson

Published: March 26, 2008

DePaul pitcher Becca Heteniak still gets excited when she says it out loud.

After almost nine months of criticism and direction. Road trips and home stands. Pitch after pitch after pitch.

The Blue Demons’ sophomore finds it hard to control her enthusiasm walking through the team’s softball offices on Chicago’s north side.

“Oh, my gosh, it’s Cat Osterman. Hey, Cat!” The former Texas ace is still a celebrity in the Windy City, just two hours southeast of Rockford, where Osterman plays professional ball.

Now, she’s also a coach.

“The hardest thing is to be a coach and then leave to play and then come back — they are very different hats,” said Osterman, who became the pitching coach at DePaul in August 2007.

“It’s a challenge because you get to know these girls and then you have to go away.”

The challenge for Osterman today is to beat the girls she’s spent the better part of a year getting to know.

Team USA faces the Blue Demons in the first half of today’s exhibition double-header at ASA Hall of Fame Stadium. And Cat — the celebrity/ coach — is pitching against her team.

“It’s going to be hard not to be coaching when I’m out there,” Osterman said. “I’m afraid I’ll throw a pitch and then start telling them how to correct their swing at the plate.”

Osterman didn’t intend to become full-time pitching coach at the perennial softball power. She originally offered volunteer instruction to the DePaul pitching staff.

“I’ve always wanted to be a coach, but I knew what my schedule was going to be like with Team USA,” Osterman said. “I called Eugene Lenti to volunteer and two weeks later he called back.”

DePaul’s former pitching coach had accepted a head coaching job at Northern Illinois and Lenti rushed to offer the Olympic gold medalist first dibs.

Osterman purchased a condo near downtown Chicago and set to the task of relating her worldclass pitching techniques to collegiate athletes aspiring to reach her level.

“If someone gives up three bombs in a game, I try to tell them it happens to all of us,” Osterman said. “But then they’re like, ‘That never happened to you.’”

Said Heteniak: “It’s weird to see her Under Armour commercial and then realize she’s our coach. She’s the best pitcher in the world, but she’s a good coach, too.”

Any chance Osterman might take it easy on her players today? “I’m not giving them anything,” she said.

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