Princeton University Athletics
Sarah Peterman: Pretty Smile, Pretty Determined
August 01, 2000 | General
She was eight years old.
While the rest of the girls were playing softball, Sarah Peterman was making her presence felt among the boys. She was the lone girl in a baseball league, and she had just finished her season. Instead of rewarding her perseverance and success amidst an undoubtedly steady spray of cootie jokes, her coach rewarded her for something else.
When he handed out the team awards, Sarah Peterman got one for Prettiest Smile.
She was eight years old, and her hard work had not been justly rewarded.
The sun was out in full force, but the outlook was somewhat dismal for the Princeton Tigers. It was April 18, 1999, and the defending Ivy League champion Harvard Crimson took Class of 1895 Field with a mission and an ace. Chelsea Thoke, who would eventually be voted by the league coaches as Ivy Player of the Year, took the mound with the intention of burying Princeton's fading title hopes. She was on top of her game, allowing one run on three hits and striking out nine batters.
Her opponent--the girl with the pretty smile--was better. The numbers were both spectacular and just enough for a 1-0 victory: seven innings, two hits, no walks, 11 strikeouts and no runs.
The joy was short-lived. Cornell eventually took the title and Peterman, who threw seven consecutive complete-game shutouts and had numbers that rivaled any pitcher in the league, wasn't even named first-team All-Ivy.
Again, the hard work goes unrewarded.
There was a certain skip to her step the day Peterman was to be interviewed for this story. She had just received her first law school acceptance. UC-Davis, the institution that happens to be located in her hometown, said `yes' to one of the hardest, most dedicated workers you'll ever meet.
The hard work began in California and it helped her become the dominant pitcher she is today. She developed as a softball player there, working her way through some of the top summer leagues on her way to Old Nassau. She started playing at nine years of age and was pitching for a competitive team within three years.
By the time she was 15 years old, Peterman was pitching successfully against the best Amateur Softball Association (ASA) teams and preparing for her SATs. After all, schools would soon be asking for them. Peterman assumed her college destination would be somewhere on the coast, and she was right.
She just picked the wrong coast.
"I love California, but I thought it would be fun to live on the East Coast for a while," she says. "My parents were excited at the idea of an Ivy League school. It was hard, but once I was leaving California, it didn't matter how far I went."
The distance wasn't an issue because she knew it was temporary. The rest of her graduate school applications were sent up and down the Golden State. Peterman can't envision her future being anywhere else.
But you'll have to forgive her if she leaves the future for the future. There is a present that Peterman is quite focused on.
Princeton has produced 12 Ivy League softball championships in its illustrious history. The last one came in 1996, when Peterman was a senior at Davis High. She entered with high expectations but lost her entire freshman season to injury. She developed osteoma, a small bone tumor that doctors needed to scrape off her right leg. Her rehab helped her become one of the team's top pitchers as a sophomore, but a championship again eluded her.
She produced one of the most impressive individual seasons in quite some time as a junior. Peterman pitched 273.1 innings and ended with a 1.01 ERA. Her strikeout-to-walk ratio was 5:1, and she did all this with the pressure of knowing that most of her wins would need to be shutouts.
"There is a lot of pressure, but I think I've always thrived on pressure," Peterman, the Tigers' lone senior this season, says. "I've always liked to pitch, and I've always liked to pitch against the toughest teams. It's exciting. Once I'm warming up, I'm wanting to start the game."
Wanting to start it, wanting to end it and wanting to win it.
"She is as tough a kid as I've coached in a long time," veteran coach Cindy Cohen says of her staff ace. "She is a great pitcher, but her competitive fire makes her even more dangerous. She expects to win every time she steps on the mound, no matter how big the game is. She is probably even better as the game gets bigger."
Her competitive fire has been flamed by the ultimate goal--the Ivy championship.
"It's hard to express how much I want it because I've never had it," she says. "I definitely want to experience it. I want to end my career more with team success than individual success."
It doesn't take a championship to be a champion, but it certainly would be a justified exclamation point to her career.
Peterman started her senior season by allowing no earned runs in 13 innings at the Terrapin Invitational at Maryland. Her focus is already at midseason form, and her pitching will only get better as she continues to step on the mound. Her hope is that she can take the mound in Cambridge, Mass., on April 22 with Ivy supremacy on the line. If Princeton can make it through the rest of the league schedule, the final obstacle to a championship would be the Crimson.
At her best, Peterman knows it's an obstacle she can handle.
"I'm looking to improve as the season goes on," she says, "so I can be at my best and peak when I need to be there."
If that's where she is, Harvard better be armed with quite a bit more than cootie jokes to topple Peterman. If not, the Crimson will see just how pretty her smile can get.
And just how rewarding hard work can be.