Gieron Takes Big Step Up for Foothill

There was a time in the not-too-distant past when Marie Gieron was a scaredy-cat, followed by a period during which she was paranoid.

Those days are over.

Gieron, Foothill’s pitcher, has a new physique this season, a new attitude and new command of her pitches. And if she was once a weak link in Foothill’s impressive softball program, she is now one of its clasps.

Gieron has added 18 pounds by hitting the weight room. As a result, she has 50 strikeouts in 57 1/3 innings; she had 72 strikeouts in 146 2/3 innings last year. As a hitter, she has already cleared the fence at Foothill’s home field, where the fences were moved back 15 feet. Only two players cleared the fence at its previous 200. And Gieron (7-1) pitched a one-hitter last week against Mater Dei in the Fountain Valley tournament championship, knocking the Monarchs off their pedestal as the top-ranked team in the Southern Section and putting Foothill there instead.

It has been that kind of year for Gieron, who undertook a major commitment in the off-season to ensure this would be her year.

“I started hitting [the weight room] after we lost last season,” Gieron said. “I thought, ‘I can’t have another season like this. Next year is going to be my year.’ ”

Gieron went 20-3 with a 0.62 earned-run average. But Foothill, a Southern Section finalist in 1994 and seeded No. 1 in 1995 with its returning class, was beaten in the Division I quarterfinals by Westlake Village Westlake, 3-2, on a rare home run that cleared the fence at Foothill’s home field.

Gieron gave up the home run and took it personally.

“I didn’t like the fact that people were going around [during the year] saying that pitcher was the weak link and knowing that that pitcher was me,” Gieron said. “I did my best throughout the season knowing that.

“That’s part of the reason why I tried working harder in the off-season. I don’t think I’m the weak link any longer.

“This year, I thought, ‘I want [my teammates] to be proud of me, for it to be a team effort, for it to be 50-50.’ ”

She wanted to be as good at her position as her teammates were at theirs.

It was an obvious reaction by someone so young. She will graduate in June, before her 17th birthday. She began school early, then skipped a grade, and could easily be a sophomore today.

Instead, she was a sophomore two years ago, thrust into a stressful situation when star pitcher Amy Tessman quit midseason. Gieron, more accustomed to playing right field, had never pitched a complete game on the varsity level, but pitched her team to the section final with a loaded junior lineup and excellent defensive team behind her.

“We kept having to tell her, you’re good enough, you’re good enough,” Foothill Coach Joe Gonzalez said. “That’s the big difference I see in her today. She’s confident in herself. We don’t have to give her a pep talk to get her started. We had to do that the last couple of years.”

“She wants to pitch in every big game we have, and that’s the difference. She wants to be in the tough games. When she was a sophomore, she pitched in those games, but I don’t know how thrilled she was about it.”

She wasn’t thrilled at all.

“They said, ‘Here’s the ball, OK?’ ” Gieron said. “I wasn’t ready to pitch. I was only 14, I didn’t have command of my pitches, and I didn’t want to let the team down. But I still tried my best.”

And she got that weak-link reputation that carried over to her junior season and left her feeling like an outsider among a talented starting lineup.

“I felt intimidated, wondering what the team thought, like ‘We had this little pitcher and we were going to lose,’ ” Gieron recalled. “I didn’t know what they were thinking but I wanted to prove myself to them.”

She went to a friend who practically lived in the weight room, 1994 graduate Jeff Clem, after last year’s loss. “I told him I wanted to get buff,” Gieron recalled. “He told me to make sure I was there every day.”

She began triceps exercises with 30-pound weights, but is now up three sets of 10 at 80 pounds. She used to curl the bar on her biceps exercises, but has added 20 pounds. And she’s doing three sets of 10 at 65 pounds on the bench press.

She sent videotapes to prospective colleges in June, shortly after she began her new routine, and Creighton softball Coach Brent Vigness, according to Gieron, “said he wanted a big girl that could throw the ball hard and could play the field and hit. I was a tall girl who could play the field, but I wasn’t throwing the ball as hard as I am now.”

When an assistant saw a much bigger Gieron in November, Creighton was sold. She signed a letter of intent and expects to play next year as pitcher, first base and right field.

“[Vigness] told me that in one scholarship, he’s getting three scholarships’ worth,” Gieron said.

Gieron now has a presence in the circle. Anyone who saw her last year will immediately notice the difference. Instead of 5 feet 9, 145 pounds, she’s 5-11 1/2, 163. But the biggest change isn’t physical, she said, but mental--including her self-esteem.

“I knew I was big, but I never went out there with a killer attitude,” Gieron said. “I have a lot more trust in myself.”

Instead of hoping the opposition wouldn’t hit her pitches, as she had in the past, she cuts loose and dares them to with improved velocity and better-developed pitches.

“Our whole thing in preparation is that if you gear yourself to another team, you’re going to be as good as that team, but if you make yourself as good as you can be, who knows how good that is?” Gonzalez explained. “We don’t want to play to the level of the competition.

“Marie Gieron has absolutely lived that out.”