CALEDONIA — The video says all you need to know about Cassie Obman.
It doesn’t matter that it shows Obman playing catcher with one of her first Caledonia park league softball teams. The telling sign from the video comes from the comments Obman, now a junior catcher for the Caledonia High School fast-pitch softball team, made last week when she found the video on her family’s home computer.
“My form was awful,” Obman recalls saying. “It was just terrible to look back on it.”
If you watched Obman play catcher today, you wouldn’t be able to recognize her from that first video. That’s because Obman has worked hard to improve her skills receiving and blocking pitches. With one more season of prep ball, Obman hopes her skills continue to improve to help her realize a goal to play softball in college.
On Thursday, Obman received a piece of news that should allow her to attract the attention of even more college coaches when she was named the Class 4A, Region 4 Defensive Player of the Year.
Caledonia coach Robin Elmore learned of the award Thursday morning and couldn’t have been happier for Obman.
“I have watched her improve so much behind there,” Elmore said. “You tell your catcher to be a wall back there, and she literally was a wall back there. I know she got tired of hearing me say that.”
Obman had a .409 batting average with 27 hits and 22 walks and played an integral role in Caledonia beating Amory and Cleveland in the Class 4A State tournament. Elmore said more than half of the walks Obman earned were intentional. Obman also added six doubles, two triples, and one home run, but it was her work with pitchers Hope Burton and Carlee Dale that earned her the most accolades. Whether the pitch was inside or outside or in the dirt or at the letters, Obman was going to be there to block it or catch it.
“I definitely take pride in it,” Obman said. “I do it in warmups. I do it when the pitcher is warming up. I do it in the game no matter if there is a runner on base because it looks really, really good, especially to coaches. I definitely take pride in it. It is less energy for me to drop to my knees and block the ball than to get up and have to run and go get it. I just love it. I don’t know why. I think it is a state of mind. I will do anything to keep that ball in front of me.”
Obman said no one really taught her how to catch, and that she started to play the position in the Caledonia park league. She said one year the team didn’t have a catcher, so she decided she was up to the challenge. She found playing the position came naturally.
When Obman reached the high school level, she said she modeled herself after former Caledonia High catcher Ashley Langford. She also said she tries to go to as many Mississippi State games as she can. She also tries to watch games on television and has been to several camps, where she has received instruction on how to play the position.
If you have watched Obman, she is constant motion, shifting from left to right to block pitches or to keep an eye on runners on base.
“I try to be quiet behind the plate,” Obman said. “If you move a lot, especially when you’re framing the ball, the umpire is going to call it a ball, so I try to be quiet behind there and try to let everything come naturally.”
The “quiet” Obman has come a long way from the young Obman with the “terrible” form. She said she “never thought” she would be where she is today, blocking balls for her high school and travel ball teams. She credits Tony Knight, the coach of her Tupelo travel team, for helping her to improve as a catcher. She said she often practices with Knight on Wednesdays or Sundays, and is working on throwing from her knees so she can do that next season. This will be Obman’s second season with the Tupelo travel ball team out of Tupelo.
Obman also credits her parents, Joel and Kim, for her development as a catcher. She said her father used to play slow-pitch softball for the United States Air Force team. She said her mother has told her she plays softball like her father used to. Unfortunately, Obman said she never saw him play.
“Everyone who talks to me says he was awesome and he was a really great player,” Obman said, “so I hope I can live up to his expectations and live up to his legacy.”
Part of that legacy involves “making the pitcher look good,” according to Obman. She also recognizes that another part of her job is to protect the umpire to make sure he or she “stays on her team’s side.” In an effort to do that, Obman remembers asking her mother to tally the number of blocked balls she had in a game. She said her mother declined because there would be way too many to keep track of. Obman said she can’t keep count because there are too many other things on her mind, so she tries to remember the ones that get by her so she can improve and prevent it from happening the next time.
Obman said that approach is at the heart of her progression as a catcher. Even though she considers herself “above average” at the high school level, Obman acknowledges there “always is room for improvement” and that she understands she has so much more work to do to realize her goal of playing at the next level.
“I think it just goes back to maturity and never be satisfied,” Obman said. “That is one thing coach Elmore always says to us. She says even though you have a win, if you won that one game, you should always want to do better. … She says always strive to be better, and I do. I think that is one thing about me that everyone knows, that I always try to do better.”
Elmore agrees that Obman has matured in her time in the program. She said she hasn’t seen Obman get satisfied because she has picked off runners or that she didn’t allow a passed ball in a game. Instead, Elmore said Obman’s mind-set always has pushed her to get better.
“She would always come back and say, ‘I should have had that one ball that got by her,’ ” Elmore said. “That is what great players are made of. They don’t focus on all of the good and they can come back and say, ‘I need to fix that one thing.’ That means you’re going to get better and better and better.
“She just has been a joy to coach. She is a hard worker. I remember when she was an eighth-grader and she was sweeping the dugouts. I told her, ‘Let some of the other girls do that.’ She said, ‘No, coach. They won’t do it right. It has got to look good.’
“I said, ‘Girl, if you keep that work ethic I will be watching you play somewhere after high school.’ ”
Obman is focused on making the dream come true. When she thinks back to that video, she believes her mother shot it to send to her father, who was deployed to Afghanistan at the time. Since then, she has become the “workhorse” that was the backbone of Caledonia’s defense this past season. But in a few years, Obman might have a similar reaction to watching herself play because there is no telling how much better she is going to get.
“I hope when I am in college I will look back on myself in high school and say, ‘Oh my gosh, my form is awful and everything is awful,’ like I am now with my 10-year-old self,” Obman said. “But there definitely is always room to get better.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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