Collegiate Times

tincher centerpiece 9.16

While the Virginia Tech softball team began warming up for practice on Friday, Angela Tincher slowly walked across the field to the dugout. Donning shorts, sandals and a purse at her side, the 2008 ACC Female Athlete of the Year had arrived late.

Tincher wasn't disciplined by coaches for her tardiness, in part because she is now the one who will do the reprimanding as she helps the softball team as a volunteer assistant coach this fall, apparently feeling that the 123 wins she gave to Tech wasn't adequate.

Even as late as August, Tincher planned to come back to Tech to attain a master's in business administration and act as a graduate assistant coach for the softball team. But things changed for Tincher, and she will now operate as a volunteer assistant coach.

"I decided to just wait and take this semester to take a break from everything, relax and train and stuff like that," Tincher said, "so just a title change ... graduate assistant is different because I would be a student, but now I'm purely a volunteer."

Although right now she will take some well-deserved time off, she ultimately wants to return to her alma mater to finish her schooling.

I had some things come up that I wanted to pursue," Tincher said. "... I definitely wanted to be back at Virginia Tech at some point, but it just didn't work out right now."

While she will be coaching this fall, the most decorated athlete in Tech's history traveled back to Blacksburg this weekend to be honored before the Georgia Tech game on Saturday. The original plan was to honor Tincher with two of the major awards she won last season -- the USA National Softball Player of the Year and the Honda Award for Softball, but the athletics department had a bigger plan.

After the awards had been presented, HokieVision showed the Hokie Bird at Tech Softball Park, where he dramatically removed a white sheet from the outfield wall to show her newly retired No. 1 jersey. She is only the 12th player or coach to have his or her number retired in Tech's history and only the third female athlete.

The three time all-American finished her career with a record of 123-35 and an ERA of 0.78, and finished with the third most strikeouts in NCAA history. Last season she became only the second player ever to win both the Honda Award for Softball and the USA National Softball Player of the Year.

This summer Tincher pitched for the Akron Racers, who drafted her third overall in the National Pro Fastpitch draft.

Even though the level of play was much higher, she had a very successful rookie season, winning 12 games while earning all-league honors and leading the league with 157 strikeouts.

"The competition was good," Tincher said. "Everyone's been a star at their college so it was a little more consistent down through the order, and you're playing a lot of really experienced players that have been out of college and been in the league for a long time, so that was different."

Next summer, Tincher will play a second season for the Racers. However the finance major doesn't know exactly what she wants to do beyond that. One thing she does know is that she wants to stay in the sport she dominated.