Leslie Jury's transition from an infielder to a pitcher occurred as she grew.
Too tall for shortstop, a coach told her, Jury moved to the mound and became a sensation in South Carolina. It did take a few years, though.
"I started and I was awful," said Jury, now a senior at
Mann (Greenville, S.C.) and a recent signee for the University of Alabama.
Leslie Jury
Photo by Jed Blackwell
After throwing more than 100 pitches a day after the move, Jury became better at stopping opposing hitters. Mann assistant coach Vicki Corn was the person who switched Jury's position during her early teen years and her reasoning for the move was simple.
"She was bigger than all the other kids and not as heavy. She was a tall, slender girl with big hands and long fingers which is a prototype for a good pitcher," Corn said. "She was a good athlete and when she threw the ball, she threw it really, really hard and I felt like there was something there that you don't see often that could make a great pitcher."
Jury has certainly turned into that.
Now, a 6-footer, Jury's stride gets her closer to the batter and she's topping 70 mph on the radar gun. She throws five pitches - rise, drop, screw, curve and change - and throws them with accuracy.
That wasn't always the case.
"The first couple of years she couldn't throw the ball in the same area code. She threw it so hard, but so wild," Corn said. "Nobody could catch it and nobody could hit it. She was just wild. As she got older and began developing some control with her speed, then it started looking like something big could happen with her."
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