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high school sportsSoftball

Two years after finger injury, Pilot Point pitcher Skylar Cagle is on the cusp of a perfect season

Pilot Point softball coach James Ramsey has a pitcher who’s working on a perfect season. He’s not afraid to reveal one of the reasons Skylar Cagle will take a 26-0 record into Wednesday’s Class 2A state semifinal matchup with Garrison.

“Her go-to pitch is her riseball,” Ramsey said.

For a while, though, Cagle thought she might not ever be able to go to that pitch again.

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The summer before her junior year, Cagle tore ligaments in a finger on her pitching hand while pitching in a select tournament. The injury did more than sideline her for six months.

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“I thought that I wouldn’t be as good as I was,” she said. “That thought was kind of scary. My riseball is what suffered the most. I didn’t think I would ever have that pitch again.”

Cagle said “probably 95 percent of my pitches were my riseball” before the injury. The injury forced the Northwestern State signee to change her grip on her riseball.

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“Because my riseball wasn’t what it was, I really had to use my other pitches a whole lot more, which helped me in the long run,” Cagle said. “Now all of my pitches are better.”

Cagle wasn’t 100 percent going into last season, but she was still good enough to go 19-12, earn All-State recognition and lead Pilot Point to the regional semifinals in 3A. This season, with her riseball “back to where it was” before she got hurt and with Pilot Point dropping down to 2A, the senior hasn’t lost and has a 0.73 ERA with 14 shutouts and 243 strikeouts in 162 innings.

Cagle has three wins over 5A teams and five victories against 4A schools. She’s also been one of the top hitters in the Dallas area, batting .614; she leads her team in runs (51) and is second in home runs (five) and RBIs (39).

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And to think that softball wasn’t her best sport in the beginning and that pitcher wasn’t always her preferred position.

“Starting out, we used to think basketball was probably going to be her sport,” her father, John, said. “Softball, she just didn’t do too well — the first year anyway. But turns out, softball, she fell in love with it.”

“I played a lot of shortstop when I was younger,” Cagle said. “I thought pitching was hard, and I would get frustrated with it. I would think shortstop would be where I wanted to play, but I stuck with pitching and fell in love with it.”

It helped that Cagle had a place to practice right in her backyard.

“My husband built a barn in the back of our property, and there’s a batting cage in it,” Cagle’s mother, Angee, said. “Also, when she was younger, we had a field as well.”

For the last few months, Cagle has been teaching local youths ages 8 to 13 how to pitch. She said she’s enjoyed the experience but doesn’t plan to be a coach. Instead, she’s thinking about pursuing a career in radiology.

“Medical stuff fascinates me, but I don’t think I could stick somebody with a needle,” Cagle said. “So I think radiology would be a way to go.”

She’s already produced one image that sticks out: that of an unbeaten pitcher.