Interesting observation by Will regarding Angela's 2000+ strikeouts placing her only behind Monica and Kat. My daughter was a contemporary of these girls and, in fact, was the state collegiate pitcher of the year in 2009 following Angela's graduation in '08. Will correctly pointed out strikeouts have trended down in the last decade but he and Chris sort of struggled to explain it. I can't either but I do know that these girls were not advantaged by the 43' pitching distance. In fact, they all had to adjust moving from the 40' rubber in HS. Today's pitchers don't face this adjustment since they already throw from 43 in HS. For my daughter it wasn't difficult because of her velocity and the fact that, beginning her junior year in HS, we only drilled @ 43' ignoring the fact that in HS she still threw @ 40'. No doubt hitting has improved but also note that Kat and Monica are on the Olympic team going to Tokyo. Some politics? Yes . . . but also a recognition of the fact that they are probably two of the five best pitchers to ever play the game. Angela would also be in that conversation. As an aside Angela and my daughter only faced each other once and that was in travel ball. Both had shutouts going when, in my daughter's second AB of the day, Angela came inside with a rise and hit my daughter's right hand on the bat. Ironically the umpire ruled it a strike. My daughter pitched one more inning before the pain became too great. We found out later the finger was broken. The game remained 0 - 0 thru the 7th. By rule runners were placed on 2nd base in extra innings. Angela threw two rise balls to the backstop and our runner scored. We won 1-0 despite the fact that Angela struck out 17! Her Shamrocks team was loaded with several girls who would eventually be collegiate All-Americans. We were pretty good too as all our kids eventually started for D1 teams.