Thibodaux native and former Vandebilt Catholic High School softball pitcher Nora Keehn has yet to pitch an official inning for the University of West Alabama, but she has already gained recognition within the Gulf South Conference.
Keehn, a junior who spent her first two college seasons at Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College in Perkinston, Miss., has been named one of the Top 28 newcomers in the conference heading into the 2018 Division II college softball season.
Keehn said she hopes to help the softball team improve on last season’s 21-31 overall record, which included an 11-22 mark in conference.
West Florida was selected first overall with 162 points and 10 first-place votes in the preseason poll and West Alabama, located in Livingston, Ala., came in 11th with 57 points.
“I am happy to be at West Alabama now. It feels like home,” Keehn said during a recent interview with The Courier and the Daily Comet. “We have a lot of pitchers here and we are all going to help the team. Our coach (Carie Dever Boaz) is only in her second year here and our expectations are really high. She has turned around a lot of programs and we want to be the team that turns this program around.”
Keehn emerged as one of the top junior-college pitchers in the country in her first two seasons and took home numerous pitching awards and was recently honored with the David H. Halbrook Academic Achievement Among Athletes Award for the 2016-17 school year.
The Mississippi Association of Community and Junior Colleges presents the award after every school year to one male and one female sophomore student-athlete at each of its member schools with the highest grade point average.
Keehn, a former all-state player who led Vandebilt to a Class 4A runner-up title in her junior year of 2015 and once struck out 20 batters in a prep game, finished the 2016-17 school year with a 4.0 GPA.
As a freshman pitcher in college, Keehn posted a 14-2 record with a 0.98 earned run average (third lowest in the country) and made all A’s and one B.
This past spring as a sophomore, the right-hander wrapped up her final season at Mississippi Gulf Coast and helped the team to a 40-14 mark and its third-straight 40-win season.
She was named to Fastpitch News National Junior College Athletic Association Division II All-American Honorable Mention team and finished with a 21-6 overall record and had two saves.
She posted a 1.99 ERA with 123 strikeouts to 24 walks.
“My first two years there really were a good experience,” Keehn said. “It helped me understand what I needed to do in college and helped me grow in softball. It helped let me know the things I needed to work on and improve on. It helped me a lot.”