Masuk’s star centerfielder Natalie Lieto, 18, stepped up to the plate in the fifth inning of the Premier Girls Fastpitch High School All-American Game in Irvine, Calif., as a member of the East Team. Aside from the crowd packed into Deana Manning Stadium, ESPN’s cameras captured the moment in a national telecast on July 27.
The game featured the top 40 high school players in the country. Lieto played in the fourth, fifth and sixth innings. Because of the dominant pitching, this was her only at bat.
Lieto decided to take the first pitch, a curveball that came over the plate for a strike.
“I didn’t want to swing at a curveball,” she recalled during an interview Friday. “I wanted her to come at me in the strike zone, so I could hit it.”
The next pitch was another curveball that nipped the outside corner of home plate for strike two. Suddenly, Lieto found herself in an 0-2 hole with two outs.
“I remained calm,” she said. “The next pitch was super high.”
Lieto didn’t bite and the umpire called, “ball.” The count was one ball, two strikes.
“The next pitch was up and in,” she said. “I always like it there, because I can turn on it.”
The right-handed hitter made solid contact, pulling the ball toward left field. It just made it over the out-stretched glove of the third baseman for a single.
Lieto remembers how tight her PGF issued cleats felt around her feet as she ran to first base.
“I was just so grateful to be able to be there and perform on a national stage,” she said. “It was the highest honor in youth softball. It gave me some confidence, definitely.”
Lieto’s confidence was built up over four years of playing for championship teams at Masuk and from several years playing travel softball for the Rhode Island Thunder’s national teams.
In her career at Masuk, Lieto belted 45 home runs, collected 150 hits, scored 172 runs and had 138 runs batted in. Among her individual accolades, she was four-time GameTimeCT All State, four-time CHSCA All-State and four-time All-SWC.
She earned a scholarship to play at Penn State University next season.
The Premier Girls Fastpitch (PGF) game was the only time Lieto was on TV, but the Nittany Lions’ games will air on the Big 10 Network.
“If we make the NCAA tournament it will be on ESPN,” Lieto said.
Penn State Head Coach Clarissa Crowell is building a winning program. In her third year last season, she guided her team to the tournament for the first time since 2011. Lieto is in Crowell’s third recruiting class.
Penn State Assistant Softball Coach Mysha Sataraka attended the all star game on July 27 and greeted Lieto after she got a hit.
“She came up and gave me a big hug and said, ‘oh my God, you’re so awesome. I can’t wait to get my hands on you at Penn State,'” Lieto recalled with a smile. “She jokingly said, ‘now your mine.’ I told her I was so calm. I was the first Penn State player in that game, so she said, ‘you put us on the map.'”
A family of athletes
Lieto’s family and friends gathered together to watch a YouTube livestream when the PGF picked 20 high school players for the West and 20 for the East to play in its July 27 game. Lieto was among a list of 1,000 All Americans the organization chose from for the rosters.
The list had been whittled down to 100 qualifying players from each region.
“I was the last picked,” Lieto recalled. “We all screamed, because I never thought I would make it to something like that. I’m just so honored to be part of it — and grateful.”
Lieto’s parents, Frank, who is Monroe’s town attorney, and Nicole and sisters, Sofie, who is a good player on Masuk’s softball team, and Josie, 14, went to the game to cheer her on.
Josie’s entire 14U Rhode Island Thunder softball team also made the trip.
“Josie will be a freshman at Masuk and she’s much better than I am,” Lieto said. “Sofie will be a senior at Masuk. She committed to Providence.”
Their mother, Nicole, did not play sports growing up, but was a dancer, who was athletic, according to Lieto. Frank played baseball and football at Masuk High School and went on to play Division 1 football for Marist College.
Believing in herself
Lieto came down with COVID during her freshmen season at Masuk, but Head Coach Leigh Barone put her right into the starting lineup when she recovered, which did not sit well with some seniors who didn’t earn the spot.
“Some of the seniors didn’t like me at all,” Lieto recalled. “Coach Barone stood up for me. She instilled confidence in me. From there, I made a national team, the Rhode Island Thunder.”
The Thunder has 14U, 16U and 18U teams.
“I made the 16U national team, which is well-respected across the country,” Lieto said. “That instilled confidence in me, because I didn’t think I was a Division 1 player. I never thought I would be good enough to travel the country and play softball or compare to, or even be at the level of the players I wanted to become.”
The 16U team practiced with the 18U team. “They had players who were amazing, going to Division 1 schools,” Lieto said of the older team. “I didn’t look confident.”
Three star players noticed Lieto’s talent, didn’t like the way she carried herself and got in her face.
“They yelled at me. It was good,” Lieto recalled. “They said, ‘you should be confident and be a leader.’ They said I knew what I was doing, ‘we know it. We see it and you have to show it.'”
Lieto said she was honored that they took an interest in her, because they didn’t get on anyone else.
“I try to do that with my sister’s team, because they’re great players, especially my little sister, so I get on her every day,” she said of her experience as an assistant coach for the Thunder’s 14U team.
Royal blue and red
Because of her own experience freshmen year, Lieto said she always strove to make new teammates feel welcome, while playing softball at Masuk.
“We had the best chemistry last season,” she said, recalling how teammates held each other accountable at practice to ensure everyone was playing with maximum effort.
The Panthers enjoyed a perfect season, going 28-0, winning the SWC Championship, and outscoring four tournament foes by a combined 22-3, culminating in a 3-0 shutout of Jonathan Law in the Class L Championship.
Lieto said the greatest moment of her high school career was watching teammate Ava Moretti smash a walk-off, two-run home run over the left field fence to send Masuk to a dramatic 6-4 win over Newtown in nine innings in the South-West Conference Championship game at DeLuca Field.
Adding to the emotion of the moment, Moretti’s father had passed away the year before and she was sidelined following surgery on her knee stemming from a basketball injury and had to sit out the softball campaign.
“He was like my second dad,” Lieto said of Moretti’s father. “It was hard on Ava’s family. I was standing on the deck and I just knew that he would lead us. We all could feel him there, ‘wow, that was him!’ It was awesome.”
Lieto said Moretti’s father, who was friends with Lieto’s father since fifth grade, had died suddenly.
“We just kept playing ball for him, as he would want us to,” Lieto said. “When he passed away in May of 2023, I made royal blue and red ribbons.”
Lieto and her Panther teammates wore the ribbons in their hair in Moretti’s honor and Lieto also gave ribbons to Newtown players she used to play youth softball with.
“I wore a red ribbon for every game I played for him and will do that at Penn State,” she said, adding of his loss, “it was hard on us. We played through it.”
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To Natalie and the entire Lieto Family, congratulations on the past and future achievements. We are all so proud!