UW's New Softball Angle: Tuiasosopo's Teaching on Pitching Geometry
April 1, 2011
By Gregg Bell
UW Director of Writing
SEATTLE -
Like all college athletes, Ashley Tuiasosopo envisioned starting every game and contributing.Like all Tuiasosopos in the heralded family of Husky athletes, she envisioned doing that and more specifically for the Huskies when she joined the UW softball team four years ago from the Seattle suburb of Woodinville.
She never envisioned this: Helping the Huskies with hits, runs, outfield defense ... and geometry?
The senior outfielder who is about to graduate with a degree in mathematics has been working with pitching coach Lance Glasoe on finding the optimum body and arm angles - where the "power line" is in relation to home plate -- for Huskies teammates to throw their most effective pitches.
Looks like Tuiasosopo's teachings are working. Washington, supposedly sinking with mega-ace pitcher Danielle Lawrie now in professional ball, is 25-2 and ranked sixth in the country heading into this weekend's Pac-10-opening series at Husky Softball Stadium against 14th-ranked Oregon (28-4).
Friday's series opener of Tuiasosopo's final Pac-10 season was rained out and the Huskies will play a doubleheader Saturday at 1 p.m. and a series finale on Sunday.
"She's the math whiz. Might as well take advantage of what she is doing in school to help us," Huskies coach Heather Tarr said with a laugh of Tuiasosopo.
Tuiasosopo's geometry lessons inside the pitching circle have preceded freshman Kaitlin Inglesby going 14-1 with a 1.70 ERA and 70 strikeouts with just 16 walks in 78 1/3 innings pitched. UW's team ERA through the pre-conference games is 3.19. The ERA of Huskies' opponents, meanwhile, has been 9.18.
That's some power line.
Tuiasosopo has calculated for Glasoe the effects of deviations of motion of the ball coming off a pitcher's hand. It's much like the idea that an inch of variance in golf swings will produce yards of difference in the direction of shots.
"It's all about body position and how far off the plate their pitches will go if they land at this position," Tuiasosopo said. "If a pitcher releases the ball 2 or 3 inches off her power line (near the center of her body), how much will that affect the location of the pitch, if there's no spin on the ball.
"It's kind of fun. I guess it reinforces what (Glasoe) is telling them."
Tarr said she's never seen the principles applied to softball. No wonder she thinks Tuiasosopo is a coach in waiting.
"She should do it," Tarr said. "She has a lot to offer, just growing up in the family she grew up in, the expectation of being an accountable person is huge. We talk about recruits and players and people in our program who have had good dinner tables. She's got a GOOD dinner table."
Among the best in UW sports history, in fact.
Ashley is the second daughter and fifth child of Tina and Manu Tuiasosopo. Her father played football at UCLA and in the NFL, including for the Seattle Seahawks from 1979-1983. Her older sister Leslie (now Leslie Gabriel) was a star volleyball player for the Huskies from 1995-2000, and is now an assistant to UW volleyball coach Jim McLaughlin.
Older brother Marques was a dual-threat quarterback at UW from 1997-2001 and played eight seasons in the NFL, seven for the Oakland Raiders.
Ashley's brother Zach played football for UW from 2001-05. A third brother, Matt, had a letter of intent to play football at Washington, too, but then signed as a third-round draft choice with baseball's Seattle Mariners. He is currently a Triple-A infielder who made the big-league team out of spring training last year.
Asked if because she was the youngest she wasn't so caught up in the family's Husky-ness, Ashley just laughed.
"I was in the heart of it," she said. "I was the one tagging along to all the games. That was how I spent my summer vacations.
"The competition was bad. We sometimes accuse each other of cheating in our house, whenever we play card games or board games. There's a lot of trash talking that goes around."
Tarr sees Tuiasosopo's unique family life and how it molded her as her biggest asset - one that would serve her well should Ashley pursue her goal of coaching high school softball.
"It's been cool to help her understand, `You are different in that way. Not everybody thinks like you. Not everybody does the right things like you do. So be vocal about it. Communicate how you are thinking, because everybody doesn't have your dinner table and how you guys compete and are accountable people,'" Tarr said.
Tuiasosopo isn't just offering angles and equations to the Huskies in her final season. She tied career highs with two hits, two runs and two RBIs in three separate games in February, when Washington's offensive onslaught answered many doubts whether these Huskies could produce the necessary offense without Lawrie's dominant pitching.
She is batting .258 (8 for 31) in 22 games played, 10 of them starts, this season. Tuiasosopo, whom Tarr wanted to redshirt as a freshman but couldn't because her team already had Ashley Charters, Lauren Greer and Lawrie all redshirting in 2008, started just eight games combined over her first three seasons inside UW's loaded outfield.
"She offers so many things beyond just being a player," Tarr said. "She's a great example. She works hard. She's very unselfish. So all those things maybe balance out where she wasn't initially as a softball player.
"It's been great to see how from the middle of last year until now, she's actually become a factor for us, both defensively and offensively. She is giving herself the opportunity to be more of a factor.
"I think it's more like, `Bump this. I'm not going to just sit here and not contribute. I'm almost done.'"
