Yes, it's the same last name. No, they aren't related.
Like a basketball player with the last name Jordan or a hockey player with Lemieux on the back of the sweater, Nicole Osterman has heard the question too many times to count during a young life on the softball diamond. Former United States Olympian and reigning National Pro Fastpitch pitcher of the year Cat Osterman is famously, at least in softball circles, Texas through and through. The Ostermans from whom Nicole takes her last name are from Puerto Rico.
It's the latter heritage, in fact, that brought Nicole her biggest brush with fame on the diamond when she stepped into the batter's box not against Cat but against the southpaw legend's old nemesis, Japanese ace Yukiko Ueno, an Olympic gold medalist and two-time world champion. While playing for the Puerto Rican national team a couple of summers ago, Nicole took on a different kind of challenge than that she faces playing for the University of Tennessee-Chattanooga.
Let's just say the Southern Conference doesn't feature many pitchers like Ueno.
"I probably haven't gone against a pitcher who threw that hard in my entire life," Nicole said. "But you know what? I hit a little ground ball to second, and I was so happy about that."
She hit the ball a lot harder than that this past week, even if that ground out remains her favorite contact.
A senior outfielder for the Lady Mocs, Nicole is espnW's natonal player of the week for the part she played in helping her team compile a perfect 5-0 record. She hit .529 (9-for-17) and drew three walks in five starts. The hits included four home runs and two doubles and produced 14 RBIs. She hit in her team's marquee game of the weekend, delivering a home run and scoring twice in a 3-1 upset against ranked South Alabama. She hit in her team's closest call, hitting two home runs and driving in six runs in a 10-9 win against Ball State to wrap up the weekend. She just hit, driving in at least one run in every game.
Not bad for a player who managed just five hits and four RBIs in the team's first 10 games. Nicole is the team's cleanup hitter and a proven run producer, but her senior season had not been a rousing success early on.
"Our first two weekends I've been struggling at the plate, but I've been trying to be strong mentally," Nicole said. "Mostly what I've done is I think I made a really big adjustment when it came to my pitch selection. I've been more relaxed and I have been seeing the ball way better than I have been."
Which is why it's notable that the at-bat of which she was most proud was not one of those that ended with her trotting around the bases or dusting herself off after sliding into second with another extra-base hit. When she came to the plate in the bottom of the seventh in the finale against Ball State, Chattanooga trailed 9-8 and the potential tying run sat on first base.
There is a reason the fictional story of Mighty Casey still resonates more than a century after Ernest Thayer wrote the poem. It's because the bat-and-ball sports so easily allow heroes to engineer their own downfalls.
"It's hard to go to the plate when you've already hit two home runs," Nicole said. "Both sides are expecting something out of you. So I went up and I had a lot of pressure -- there was a runner on first and if I would have scored, I was the winning run. I was thinking a lot and it was hard to relax."
She was fooled on a changeup and came up empty on one swing, but she refused to take the bait as the pitcher tried again and again to tempt her to expand her strike zone and abandon that pitch selection in pursuit of one more bit of glory.
Mighty Casey struck out. Nicole trotted to first base.
"At the end, I was proud of myself because she pitched me a lot of balls and I laid off and I got a walk," she said.
As a result, when Kailey Palazzolo singled to left field later in the inning, Nicole was on third base and able to cross home plate with the winning run.
And for at least one week, she was the best Osterman in softball.