KENNEDY TWP — Monica Glomb is a contradiction.

Her fingernails are perfectly manicured, but the senior Mars softball pitcher grabs a handful of dirt and grinds it into her palms before each inning.

She stands on the pitching rubber, smiles coyly at her catcher and giggles as she throws her leg up in a girly pose, but her pitches scream into the mitt with anger and malice.

Monica Glomb is complicated. Monica Glomb is hard to figure, in and out of the pitching circle.

"I don't know," she said, looking down at the ground before glancing up again, her mind trying to find the words to explain an attitude that sometimes comes off as aloof. "I just try to have fun out there, try to take the pressure off."

When it comes to Glomb, looks can be as deceiving as any one of her seven pitches.

She's by no means imposing in the circle. She stands a mere 5-feet-6. She doesn't grunt or snarl when she winds up and unleashes a whistling fastball.

She's as calm as the air at the equator — never rustled, never flustered.

"I think she is a different type of kid," said Mars coach Michele Goodworth. "It's just her way of dealing with the pressure. I don't know what the word is, carefree, happy-go-lucky, but that's what she is."

None of her 246 strikeout victims this season could be described that way, though. To them, Glomb is a regular bulldog.

"I've always said she is the best pitcher in Western Pennsylvania," said Knoch softball coach Scott Docherty, who has faced Glomb five times in the last two seasons. "She has more movement on the ball than anyone I have ever seen in my life, and I've been around this sport for a long time."

Glomb led the Planets to the WPIAL Class AAA title last season as a junior, but her senior season arguably has been her best.

Her dominance has gotten lost at times in the struggles of a 12-9 team and the strange season Mars has endured.

The Planets lost Zara Zollner, one of their top hitters, early in the season and Goodworth missed several games after giving birth to a boy.

Glomb, who signed early to pitch at Kutztown State University next season, was dominant again against Belle Vernon Thursday, but lost 2-0 in part because of an unearned run and in part because of a rare string of three hits given up by the right-hander.

She struck out nine, but was not pleased by that number.

"Since I got a Division II scholarship, I want to strike out as many as I can," Glomb said. "My teammates like strikeouts. If someone gets on base, they freak out a little bit. They're not used to it."

The loss to Belle Vernon ended the Planets' bid to repeat as WPIAL champions. It didn't, however, end its season.

Mars and Glomb still have at least one game left. They are thinking much bigger, however.

"There have been a lot of teams who didn't win the WPIAL but went on to win the state championship," Glomb said.

She hopes to add to that statistic.

If she doesn't, it won't be from lack of experience and ingenuity.

Glomb has been groomed to be a pitcher from a young age. She works with a pitching coach in the offseason, has been Mars' main hurler since her freshman season and finds herself tinkering every day with new grips and new pitches to confound batters.

"I get bored easy," she said.

Her restlessness has helped her develop more offerings than Baskin-Robbins.

"A changeup, curveball, drop ball, rise ball, screwball, fastball, changeup," Glomb says, rattling off her pitches, needing the fingers on her left hand to count them all. "Did I already say changeup?"

It's OK that she did — she has two of them.

Glomb hasn't thought about what it will be like when the final out is recorded on her high school career.

She doesn't think that far ahead. Most of the time, she doesn't even think as far as the next pitch.

"I just want to keep on playing," she said. "I think every game I get stronger."