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Former LHS softball star recently faced Team USA
Lara Foster hasn’t scored a run for the USA Olympic softball team.
She hasn’t driven in a run, either, or stepped to the plate at all in Beijing, China. She hasn’t played, she’s not on the team and she hasn’t watched many of the Team USA’s games on TV.
The Liberty High product has contributed to the USA softball team’s success, though, albeit in a peripheral capacity.
After being selected to the Salem ASA Regional All-Stars team, Foster played against the USA Softball Women’s National team in late July as a part of the Olympians’ Bound 4 Beijing Tour. Her Salem all-stars lost, 9-0, but in the process helped Team USA prepare in its quest for a fourth consecutive gold metal.
“I’d like to say I helped them out a little bit…I think every little bit helps,” Foster, 22, said , a few months after the end of her softball career at West Virginia Wesleyan College.
Team USA’s victory over the Salem all-stars was its penultimate game before leaving for Beijing, where it began Olympic play with seven straight wins. It went during 59-1 on the Tour, which ran from Feb. 19 and July 26.
Foster got the opportunity to be a brief part of that as an alternate, of sorts. Foster said a player from Liberty University was unable to play for the all-stars so she was asked to fill in.
“They called me up and I got the chance of a lifetime,” Foster said. “I definitely said, ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’ It was amazing.”
Foster, a shortstop, and her West Virginia Wesleyan teammate Emily Nieman were the only Division II players selected for the all-stars team, which also included players from Virginia, Virginia Tech, James Madison and Appalachian State. They played in front of 4,126 fans in Salem, the largest crowd Foster had ever seen from the field.
“It was packed — a bunch of little girls screaming for people like Jenny Finch,” Foster said. “There were so many people there. It was really exciting and really good seeing all that enthusiasm.”
Foster’s highlights came in the field. She had a couple nice catches that drew cheers from the crowd, she said – because, at the plate, the all-stars had to face dominant USA pitcher Cat Osterman.
“She’s got really wicked movement on her ball,” Foster said of Osterman, who threw a no-hitter in the USA’s 3-0 win over Australia last Tuesday. “They are the best team in the world…but we showed them we could keep up.”
Foster went 0-for-2 with two strikeouts against Osterman, who allowed only two hits in the game and struck out 15...
See the Wednesday print edition of the Fauquier Times-Democrat for the complete story.
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