KNOX, Pa. (EYT/D9) — While her friends back home spent July 4 with fireworks and picnics, Natalie Bowser spent the fourth in Jamaica with a hammer and nails.
Bowser was on a mission trip through Cranberry High School, a late replacement for someone who could not make the journey.
It was a valuable experience for the recent Keystone graduate.
(Pictured above, Keystone graduate Natalie Bowser spent time earlier this month in Jamaica on a mission trip/submitted photo)
“I learned so much, actually,” Bowser said. “I learned that in every situation there’s a different way of looking at it. I learned I just need to be patient and I can’t hold on to things. I need to be just a free spirit and let the world work around me instead of me working around the world.”
Bowser spent her time in Manchester and helped build two homes and a church while she was there last week.
She also interacted a great deal with the locals, especially children who would visit them as they worked.
Bowser and others made sure to spend some time with the kids.
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“It was awesome. Everyone there is so friendly,” Bowser said. “There would be these little kids at our work sites. They would just come to play with us and they just had the pure joy of a child, the pure happiness of a child. Us being there just made their day.”
The group returned home on July 5 at 5 a.m. On Monday, Bowser was back on the road on another mission trip, this one in Indianapolis.
She is there now through Grace EC Church, which is located in Ninevah, Pa., working with the Boys and Girls Club in Indiana.
“Basically I’m just hanging out with the kids and doing sports with them all day,” Bowser said. “It’s very enjoyable.”
While Bowser was in Jamaica, she received an unexpected honor.
Bowser was named to the Pennsylvania High School Softball Coaches Association all-state team as a catcher.
She was a first-team selection.
Cell service was very spotty in Jamaica and Bowser didn’t even have her phone. Her friend and Cranberry softball player Rylee Coe did, however, and saw Bowser’s name on the all-state team scroll across her screen.
She showed Bowser, who was shocked.
“She said, ‘Hey, Natalie. Look at this. You got first team all-state,’” Bowser said. ‘I said, ‘You’re joking.’ I was like, “There’s no way my first year ever catching that I made the all-state team there.’”
But Bowser did, in large part because of her prowess at the plate.
It’s no secret that Bowser is one of the best hitters, not only in Pennsylvania, but also in the nation.
She batted .635 with six home runs, nine doubles, a triple and 27 RBIs for Keystone. Her OPS of 1.904 lead all of District 9.
Last season she hit .627 with 11 homers, and 30 RBIs and struck out just once the entire campaign.
As a sophomore, Bowser turned in one of the most dominant seasons ever in D9, Pennsylvania and the country, hitting .766 with 14 home runs — and 14 outs made all season — to go with 48 RBIs, 15 doubles, 32 runs scored and a OPS of 2.558.
After that campaign, she earned a spot as a MaxPreps All-American as a first-teamer. She made the website’s team again last year as a second-teamer.
Bowser’s high school career was limited to just three seasons because her freshman campaign was scuttled by the COVID-19 pandemic.
This year, though, was her first crouching behind the plate since she was 12.
The move was her idea.
At midseason, Keystone’s defense was struggling and the Panthers were floundering.
Bowser met with coach John Stiglitz, who asked for her opinion.
Bowser offered up a somewhat radical one.
“Our catcher last year decided not to come out this year, so we had a freshman (Lydia Sheatz) behind the plate and she did really well being a freshman, but it just wasn’t what we needed to succeed as a defense,” Bowser said. “So in the middle of the season I had a conversation with Coach John and I said, ‘We either need to work with Lydia more, or we need to figure out a different way to make our defense better’ because there were gaps in our defense.
“He asked what I had in mind and I told him my plan,” Bowser added. “We could move me and Leah to catcher and catch each other.”
Stiglitz agreed and the change produced immediate results.
Keystone got on a roll and made the District 9 Class 2A playoffs.
“The first game we were a completely different team,” Bowser said. “You could just tell everyone was more comfortable and everyone was more more confident. Leah’s pitching better. I’m pitching better. We just had the connection. It just comes naturally to us. We trust each other more and our pitches worked better because we trusted each other.”
Bowser said catching again wasn’t how she figured her senior year would go. She figured she’d be at first base, as she had been the previous two seasons.
But she quickly acclimated to her new gig.
“It wasn’t that hard,” she said. “It was remembering what I was taught when I was younger, just remembering what I had to do as a catcher, my responsibilities as a catcher.
“I had no thought that I would get all-state for catcher.”
The 6-foot-tall Bowser, who also reached a rare milestone for the Keystone girls basketball team in the winter when she surpassed 1,000 career points and 1,000 career rebounds in the same game against Cranberry, will play both softball and basketball at Penn State DuBois.
It was important for her to be able to play both at the next level.
“I already started a workout plan,” said Bowser, who admitted that has been tough to balance with her back-to-back mission trips. “I’m excited and blessed that I’m able to play two sports in college.”
Bowser had to adjust the way she played softball after her prodigious sophomore season.
Because of her outrageous numbers, word spread of Bowser’s power and ability to wreck a game. So, coaches decided to simply not pitch to the star.
No one in D9 was intentionally walked more than Bowser the last two seasons.
Bowser had to learn to deal with that tactic and still find a way to help Keystone win games.
“I’m very proud of the way I produced this season and the way I was able to mentally change my game so that my team could succeed, but it was frustrating,” she said. “It was so frustrating knowing that 14 of my 15 walks were intentional. Honestly, it was ridiculous. It should not happen, but it happens, so.”
Bowser’s frustration reached its apex during her last game in a Keystone uniform.
In her final at-bat, she was intentionally walked by Cranberry — an anticlimactic end to what was a remarkable career.
“It was so frustrating, especially because my last ever at-bat in high school was an intentional walk,” Bowser said. “I never got to have my last at-bat. I’ve come to be OK with it.”
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