Glover excels in the game of determination

If you have the latest copy of Sports Illustrated - the one with Peyton Manning on the cover - turn to page 34.

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There you'll find the magazine's "Faces in the Crowd" series.

You can read about a softball player from Georgia, a runner from Arizona, a quarterback from Florida, an Iowa swimmer, a Swedish soccer star and a Texas volleyball player.

You probably have no idea who those last five athletes are, but the picture and name that appear first on the page might look familiar.

Her hair is down and a bit longer than she wears it now, and she's lacking the eye black that became a staple during the state playoffs, but area high school sports fans undoubtedly will still recognize Greenbrier's Kristan Glover.

The Lady Wolfpack's ace since she was 13 years old, Kristan's name in Sports Illustrated is one of the latest items on an exhaustive list of accomplishments for the 18-year-old.

In her senior year alone, Kristan was named Region Pitcher of the Year and Class AAAA State Pitcher of the Year; she became the first pitcher in Georgia history to strike out more than 1,000 batters and win more than 100 games in a career; and she helped lead Greenbrier to its first state title.

The Sports Illustrated appearance isn't even her most recent honor. This week, The Augusta Chronicle honors her as Georgia softball Player of the Year.

All the individual honors are nice, but Kristan said she would've traded the whole lot for the state title that had eluded the Lady Wolfpack until this year.

"It's not something I have to have," Kristan said of the individual awards. "I know there are a lot of athletes out there that definitely want the attention. I mean, it's nice, I guess, but the win that my team got is definitely the most important thing to me. The attention for me is not that big of a deal."

Her mentality has always been "if you work hard enough, you'll get what you deserve."

So, she worked hard.

Her father and travel-team coach, Dean Glover, put a 4-by-4 piece of plywood in his daughter's closet a few years ago. The wood has a mark at its center and Kristan has an "incredible ball," a softer version of a softball that she fires at that mark over and over for 15 seconds at a time. It's one of several drills Kristan does from the comfort of her bedroom.

When she wants to throw off a mound, all she has to do is go to her back yard, where there are two pitching mounds.

Ashlee LaFontaine, who caught Kristan for three years and is now a freshman at Erskine College, remembers when the two were middle-schoolers playing for Greenbrier's summer softball team. There were two other pitchers who shared Kristan's youth and talent on the mound.

"Over the next few years, Kristan worked so much harder," LaFontaine said. "She just advanced leaps and bounds past the other two girls."

Kristan still had to prove herself in order to become the Wolfpack's ace when she got to Greenbrier as a freshman.

Dean, who had coached Kristan and her younger sister Amanda since they were 4 and 5 years old, remembers being told to stay in the car during practices that first year.

"I'm going to do this on my own," her father recalls hearing. "I'm going to work hard and prove that I am the best."

Four years later, Kristan would leave no doubt that Greenbrier coach Garrett Black had made the right choice when he picked her to help lead his team to that elusive state title.

She struck out 1,042 of the 2,886 batters she faced in 793 innings. She had a career record of 104-20, an ERA of 0.57, pitched in 19 no-hitters and threw 65 shutouts in four years.

Seven of those shutouts came as Kristan strung together 47 consecutive scoreless innings to finish the season. She and the Wolfpack won their final 17 games, capped by a 12-0 win against Chapel Hill in Columbus, Ga., that allowed Kristan to leave Greenbrier as a state champion.

"I remember looking at (Kristan) when there were two outs and we just kind of smiled," said senior Kristi Nichols, who played first base. "We just knew it was ours. We just knew we were going to get that out."

And like a scene out of a Disney movie, Amanda Glover made a diving catch of a soft liner near second base to cement her older sister's place in Greenbrier lore.

"I was just going to do anything that I could to catch that ball," said Amanda, a junior.

IN A FEW MONTHS, Kristan and Amanda will play competitive softball together for what probably will be the final time. Amanda will return to Greenbrier next fall for her senior year and what she hopes will be a second state championship ring, while Tennessee Tech awaits Kristan.

In Cookeville, Tenn., Kristan will return to a somewhat familiar situation. There are five pitchers on the Golden Eagles' roster, and all will have at least one year of eligibility left when she arrives. Just like her freshman year at Greenbrier, Kristan will have to prove herself.

"That's always the best environment for Kristan, because she loves to prove people wrong," Black said.

When Kristan's pitching coach told her she would never throw 60 miles an hour, she nearly quit his lessons. She decided to make him eat his words instead.

She since has lit up the radar gun at 65 mph.

"I don't like to be limited," she said.

That's a good thing, because college offers a whole new opportunity for awards for Kristan to collect and championships for the Golden Eagles to win.

Reach Kristy Shonka at (706) 823-3216 or kristy.shonka@augustachronicle.com.

This is the second in a weeklong series on The Augusta Chronicle's all-area athletes for fall sports.