Klaviter tosses perfect game

NEW ULM -- New Ulm native Steph Klaviter was not good enough, at least by the people who did the selecting, to make the United States Olympic softball team.

But Friday night when she pitched for her Florida Wahoos in the Women's Professional Softball League championship series (a series that her team won 2-0 to earn the 2000 WPSL title), she did something that no one had ever done in the WPSL history.

She threw a perfect game in a 3-0 win over the Ohio Pride in the first game of the best-of-3 series.

Klaviter felt "from the start (in warm-ups), I knew that going into the series with Ohio that we needed to win that first game," she said Wednesday night from Hawaii, where she is preparing to play a series against the U.S. Olympic team this weekend.

"'We are all confident on the team and my teammates were equally confident, which he helped me a lot," said Klaviter, who finished 12-2 on the season for the Wahoos. "I was hitting my spots on the plate; I was pretty tight on that until the fourth inning when we scored two runs so I was able to let go a little bit and just throw the ball."

Klaviter, who is battling a head cold and a five-hour time difference in Hawaii, said that she started thinking about the perfect game right around that inning.

During the regular season Klaviter struck out 68 batters in 83.1 innings, but in the perfecto she recorded only four strikeouts.

"My defense really played well that game," commented Klaviter. "The defense was amazing and I credit the perfect game to them. Ohio was hitting the ball to the fielders, but they made the plays."

She did not go to a three-ball count on any hitter and the final out was recorded on a fly ball that Klaviter felt was going to fall in.

"They hit a fly ball that looked like it was going to fall in between right field and second base," said Klaviter. "But the second baseman jumped up and grabbed it for the (final) out.

"I was pretty excited about the perfect game, but I was probably more excited then then when we won the title in the second game," she said.

She started the second game also but pulled herself out of the game.

"I did OK but once we got to the third or fourth inning I started missing spots and I was making mistakes with my pitches. They were getting one hit an inning. We held them off (but) then in the sixth inning a runner got on for Ohio and I talked to my catcher and we decided that it was time to make a switch."

Klaviter gave up eight hits in the game.

She and her team will start two-a-day practices preparing for the meeting with the Olympians. They play a doubleheader one day and a single game on Sunday before she returns to Denver on Monday to start her off-season work with the WPSL.

"We (WPSL) will have clinics in Colorado, Texas, California, and Ohio. I am not sure if we will be back in the midwest to do a clinic."

She said that she will be back in New Ulm for Christmas for a couple of weeks and "in October I will come back for the (University of Minnesota) softball alumni game."

YOUNG-KRUSE NAMED COACH AT MINNESOTA: Melissa Young-Kruse has been hired as an assistant women's basketball coach at the University of Minnesota.

A native of Fairfax, she will take some of the duties of coaching, recruiting, outreach programs, academic scouting and scouting. Melissa Young was a 1,000-point scorer at GFW High School and was a three-year letterwinner at Gustavus Adolphus. Her husband, Mark, is the head basketball coach at St. Croix Lutheran. They reside in Woodbury with their 18-month old daughter Natasha.

Column by Jim Bastian, Journal sports writer