Fall softball player of the year: Abby Carr dominant in Lafayette’s championship campaign

Abby Carr has a plethora of superstitions.

The Lafayette High senior pitcher and slugger sits in row No. 13, seat 13, on the bus to all away softball games. She must have her favorite snack, cheddar Goldfish, available in the dugout at all times.

The flamethrower also had the same teammate braid her hair before every single contest.

“I’m just more comfortable when things go like that,” Carr says. “They make me feel better.”

Those quirks are not really necessary.

Carr’s fastball gets the job done on its own.

The 6-footer put together a dream campaign in the fall to lead the Lancers to the Class 5 state championship — their first since 2007.

Bound for Mizzou, Carr capped off one of the best careers by an area pitcher by tossing an eight-inning no-hitter to guide Lafayette to a 3-0 win over Rock Bridge in the title game November 1 in Springfield.

Carr, who has been selected as the Post-Dispatch All-Metro fall softball player of the year, fashioned a 23-0 record with an 0.24 ERA. She struck out 304 batters in 144-plus innings, an average of 14.8 strikeouts per game.

A four-year varsity starter, Carr tossed five no-hitters this season. She will leave the Wildwood campus with school records in strikeouts (742) and ERA (0.92) in addition to three other pitching marks.

Carr might be the area’s most dominant hurler since Roxana High lefthander Dylan Mathis, who won 90 games before going on to a successful career at the University of Oklahoma from 2006-2009.

Carr’s four-pitch arsenal struck fear in opponents season after season. Plus, Carr throws harder than any other pitcher in the area, averaging an estimated 64 miles per hour on her fastball, which has been clocked as high as 69 mph.

“There’s nobody like her,” said Lafayette senior catcher Sydney Berger, who has been handling Carr since the seventh grade. “The things she does, no one else can do.”

Carr also shined at the plate. She had 10 home runs and 26 RBI, both team highs this season. She batted .476 and has set the school record for career hits with 138.

She was part of one of the biggest plays of the state championship game when she appeared to snap a scoreless tie with a long drive to left field that was set to clear the wall in the sixth inning. But Rock Bridge left fielder Ava Bush reached over the fence and snared the ball bringing it back into the field of play.

The catcher was featured on the ESPN SportsCenter top 10 plays later that night.

Ironically, Carr and Bush play on the same club team and remain friends.

The Lancers were 85-37 in Carr’s four-year career in which she compiled a 53-18 record.

Carr burst onto the scene as a freshman and fashioned a 9-7 mark with a 1.81 ERA. She got progressively better and came into her own as a junior with nifty 0.68 ERA and 165 strikeouts in 82 innings.

A former swimmer at Lafayette, Carr saved her best for last.

She struck out 27 batters and gave up just five hits in the final four and began play with a nifty 6-0 shutout win over Liberty North in the semifinal game.

That set the stage for the no-hitter, which was the 10th in the history of the state tournament that began in 1976.

Carr’s mother, Katie, enjoyed a successful career at Lafayette before going on to shine at the University of Pittsburg, where she is a member of the school’s athletic hall of fame.

Yet there is no comparing the two, according to mom.

“She’s 10 times better than I ever was,” Katie said. “It was a much different game back then. But she still does things that I never could have done.”

Katie, like Abby, is superstitious. Katie has to have a bottle of grape sugar free sports beverage at every game.

Abby fanned a state record 22 batters over nine innings in a 7-4 regular-season win over Rock Bridge on Sept. 14.

Carr received over 20 scholarship offers and narrowed her choices to Mizzou, Arizona State and Ohio State. She originally committed to Arizona State but changed her mind after the assistant coach who recruited her took a job elsewhere.

There is plenty of upside to Carr’s two-way game. Her hitting prowess is often forgotten, yet very few hurlers in the highly competitive Southeastern Conference handle both aspects of the game.

Which is fine with Carr, who is simply happy to be staying home.

“It’s close to my family and it’s going to be great to have my friends and relatives be able to come and see me,” Carr said. “This is the best for me to succeed as an athlete.”

Carr plans on taking her little traditions with her to Columbia.

“As long as they keep working she’s going to keep doing them,” said Berger, who is heading to St. Louis University. “She’ll never stop.”

No matter what happens down the road, Carr will long remember her magical senior season.

“Getting a (state title) with people I’ve played with most of the life is really special,” she said.