Pitt pitcher Berliner conquers double-major, batters

The movement of the bus gave her a headache, and the movie in the background made it hard to… The movement of the bus gave her a headache, and the movie in the background made it hard to concentrate, but still, Cory Berliner sat with the light turned on above her seat, reading over her research methods notes for an upcoming test.

As one of the Big East’s most formidable pitchers, Berliner spends her time balancing the challenge of competing as an NCAA athlete and completing a double major. During softball season, that means studying psychology and neuroscience on the way to road games.

“It’s very hard,” Berliner said. “All I have is coursework and softball. I constantly have to study while I travel. I don’t have a lot of free time. It’s rough, but education is important too.”

While simultaneously completing both challenges is difficult, Berliner knows there is more to college than softball. After the junior graduates, she wants to continue her education in veterinary school, but that wasn’t always the plan.

She always intended to go to medical school. However, a suggestion that she look into veterinary school changed her career path.

“Everything just fell into place,” Berliner said. “I’ve always been a huge animal lover. I have a dog and a cat, but this was still a recent change of mind. I’m just doing it now.”

She pairs the dedication to her education with her success on the field. As a freshman, she set Pitt’s single season and rookie wins record with 16 wins. Last season, she led the Panthers with a 1.72 ERA and took over first place for the team’s single-season ERA record.

This year, she leads Pitt with 71.2 innings pitched. She is second on the team and fourth in the Big East with a 1.95 ERA. She also leads the Panthers and is among the top pitchers in the conference with five wins so far this season.

Despite the demands of succeeding both as an athlete and a student, Berliner said the balance is something she wouldn’t mind taking on again after graduation. She said she would like to stay attached to softball if the opportunity presents itself.

“I’ve done coaching, and I did pitching lessons before a couple years ago,” Berliner said. “If I found the option to do that again, I would. I love it, and it would be hard not to play anywhere.”

This work ethic doesn’t surprise Head Coach Holly Aprile.

“She is very responsible, very dedicated to her sport and her studies and very, very bright,” Aprile said. “She takes a lot of pride in what she does and, combined with her talent, she is a formidable competitor.”

That responsibility and dedication carries over to another duty of Berliner’s: She is one of Pitt’s three team captains. Berliner said she tries to lead more by example. She doesn’t see herself as a talkative captain, but that’s something she’s trying to change.

While Berliner is quiet, Aprile said she’s also personable and friendly. She sets an example for the team to follow with her poise on the field and her devotion to academics off the field, Aprile said, and gives her teammates high standards to follow.

“Cory is a very thoughtful, kind person,” Aprile said. “Those are the first two attributes that come to mind when I think of her.”

On the field, Berliner tries to remain a calm and collected leader for the team. Although she feels nerves and anxiety, she said she tries to stay composed, because the pitcher sets the tone for the rest of the team.

“I try to tell myself it could always be worse, and it could always be better,” Berliner said. “Sometimes those big hits seem like a big deal, but it always depends. The game doesn’t stop for me. I just need to focus on the next batter.”

Berliner found her way to Pitt all the way from Fort Collins, Colo. She spent the first eight years of her life in California and lived for the next ten in Colorado.

Her father is from the Philadelphia area, and his side of the family still lives there. Berliner said she’d been to Pennsylvania to visit on several occasions and liked the eastern part of the country. When she started looking at colleges, she didn’t search anywhere other than the East Coast.

“I wanted to get the experience of going somewhere new but being near to family at the same time,” Berliner said. “Pennsylvania was perfect. I had lived on the West Coast before, and I didn’t want to go back there.”

While Berliner admits that coming to the city was an adjustment, she’s happy living in Pittsburgh. One of the biggest differences between Fort Collins and Pittsburgh, she said, is the architecture.

“Fort Collins is a small town compared to Pittsburgh,” Berliner said. “There are a lot of older buildings here, whereas in Colorado, if you want something, you build it.”

Berliner went for official visits at the University of Pennsylvania, Delaware and Colgate when searching for a school but chose Pitt because it was closer to her relatives and “felt like home.”

“The girls on the team were great,” Berliner said about her visit. “I really fit in with them more than I fit in with the girls at the other schools. It had good classes and challenging work, which is something I was looking for.”

Berliner started playing softball when she was five years old in California. Her father introduced her to the sport, and she was instantly hooked. Although she couldn’t pinpoint the first time she played, Berliner said it was probably T-ball or coach-pitch with neighborhood friends.

She didn’t start pitching until she was eight years old, and even then, she continued to play both third and first base. It wasn’t until her sophomore year of high school that she made the decision to focus solely on pitching.

“I just had a knack for it,” Berliner said. “My dad said this is what’s going to be good for you; this is what’s going to get you places.”

From there, Berliner got a pitching coach in Colorado and began working with her each week. She said her father and her pitching coach were the two greatest influences on her career.

“My dad got me started, and he taught me a lot of the basics of the game that got me here,” Berliner said. “My pitching coach, she taught me everything I needed to know about pitching before I came to college.”

Still, there were differences between softball at the high school level and the collegiate level that Berliner had to adjust to. At Pitt, Berliner said she has to concentrate on studying the charts and player batting information given to her by the coaches, because unlike in high school, she can’t pitch to everyone the same away.

“Every batter is like the best hitters you faced in summer and high school — and now there is a whole team of them,” Berliner said.

Berliner is given pitching charts of players she and the other pitchers have thrown against. The charts, resources that Berliner didn’t have in high school, show the pitches thrown and how each batter reacted.

She said that pitchers study the charts in between innings and can update their knowledge during games based on how the player performed during her last at-bat. The pitchers learn each batter’s strengths and weaknesses as she comes through, Berliner said, and they try to concentrate on throwing to the weaknesses.

Berliner became a much smarter pitcher from her first year until this season, Aprile said, and the junior generally doesn’t make the same mistakes twice. She added that Berliner has both the talent and drive to be an All-Big East pitcher.

“Her biggest strengths are her ability to hit small spots on the plate, to keep the ball low in the zone and definitely her change-up,” Aprile said. “She has a sick change-up.”