SARVER — For Ashleigh Schmidt, everything is about spin.

The Freeport graduate and junior on the Penn State Behrend softball team has developed quite the curveball. She baffled hitters with it this season in the circle for the Lions.

Schmidt also engaged in another kind of spin — twisting her career on the softball field in an entirely new (and unexpected) direction.

Schmidt never thought of herself as a pitcher; at Freeport, she only logged 53 innings in the circle.

She made a name for herself as a deadly hitter and a whiz with the glove. Schmidt left the Yellowjackets with a career .401 average and committed just seven errors while manning shortstop and second base.

Things radically changed for the 5-foot-1 right-hander this season.

The player know for abusing pitchers now was making hitters look silly.

“I honestly didn't expect to pitch as much as I did, let alone do as well as I did,” Schmidt said. “In my eyes, I was never a pitcher. I was never a starter — I was more of a closer.”

She was a closer of a different sort this season for Behrend.

Her innings increased as the season wore on and suddenly she became an ace for a team that went 28-8, won the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference championship and advanced to the second round of the NCAA Division III regional tournament.

Schmidt went 10-2 with a 2.37 ERA for the Lions. The wins led the conference. The ERA was good enough for fifth in the league.

She struck out 65 in 76 1/3 innings thanks in large part to that bewildering breaking ball and was at her best down the stretch. In her last 10 appearances, Schmidt was 4-1 with a 0.63 ERA.

“Being able to see myself accomplish what I did, especially toward the end of the season, was really humbling,” Schmidt said. “I just can't get over how much fun this season was.”

Schmidt said the key was the development of her curve and changeup.

She was never the kind of pitcher who could blow a fastball by hitters. Instead she relied on deception, and this season she had a breakthrough with her off-speed stuff.

She worked on it tirelessly in the winter.

Schmidt would set up a hitting tee on the corners of the plate and place a ball on them. She's try to knock the ball off with her pitches.

She also set up a string at knee-level to the hitter and worked on dropping her changeup just below the string.

It worked.

“The curveball and changeup were the two pitches that worked the best for me,” Schmidt said. “I think that's what kept the hitters thrown off. Also, my catchers and defense played a huge role in my success. And it helped the team was so good at producing runs.”

Schmidt was part of that, too.

On the days she didn't pitch, she played shortstop and batted .315 with 18 RBI in 73 at-bats. She only struck out five times.

Behrend had quite the 1-2 punch in the circle with Schmidt and freshman Kayla Lindberg, who was 8-4 with a 2.37 ERA.

Schmidt only pitched in two games as a freshman and made five appearances last spring in the season shortened to just 10 games because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The success she and the team had this spring as Schmidt already longing for next season.

“Honestly, I can't even wait for fall to come so we can get to work,” Schmidt said. “We're going to work super hard this summer, too, because we know what we can accomplish. All of us have an idea in mind that we are going to surpass those expectations.”