Senior Gros embracing final softball season as a Colonel

It wasn’t always this easy for Nicholls State senior pitcher Lacey Gros.

Gros picked up softball at 7-years-old and began pitching at 12.

And according to her, the transition was not as smooth as it might seem.

“Nobody is good right away,” Gros said. “I had to work very, very hard. I had to throw hundreds of pitches a day with my dad in the backyard.”

But the late afternoons in the Gros home are currently paying huge dividends for the Nicholls softball team, as the pitcher is one of the driving forces in the team’s success. Gros is the team’s leader in wins, earned run average, innings pitched, saves and strikeouts this season.

“She’s such a fighter,” said Nicholls softball coach Jenny Parsons. “She’s such a good leader. She’s real quiet, but when this team isn’t hitting she is not afraid to put them on her back. She’ll carry us.”

Gros is not a stranger to athletic success in the Tri-parish area. The Schriever native was a four-year letter winner in softball, basketball and volleyball at nearby H.L. Bourgeois High School.

She was a four-time all-district selection in volleyball and she holds the school record for aces and digs.

Gros was also the defensive MVP of the Lady Braves’ basketball team her freshman season.

But inside the dirt circle of the softball field was where Gros was most at home. During her time at Bourgeois, she recorded 1,103 career strikeouts, including 386 in her senior season – a season that she posted a 0.29 ERA.

The senior hurler said her time with the Lady Braves taught her she could always trust the ability of her teammates.

“I’m stubborn and I have a hard head,” she said. “I get down on myself a lot when things aren’t going well, but they always taught me to understand that I have a team behind me and I could trust them. High school just made me more mature.”

Following her First-Team All-State senior season, Gros signed a letter of intent to continue playing at Southern Miss.

Gros threw more than 200 innings in her freshman season and recorded a team-high 14 wins.

But despite the success, being away from home became a grind for the pitcher and she transferred to Nicholls State, forcing her to sit out the 2007 season and use her redshirt year.

“I was just kind of homesick,” Gros said. “I just wanted to play in front of my family and friends again.”

Parsons said the move into the program was not difficult for Gros.

“Being local, a lot of our kids had already played with her,” Gros said. “The transition was pretty smooth. Of course, she had to sit out a whole year, but we were glad we got her.”

Southern Miss’s loss has certainly been the Colonels’ gain and Gros has recorded 33 wins and counting in her three-seasons in the circle for the team.

“She does a really good job pitching to different teams,” Parsons said. “There is no one style of team that has an advantage on her.”

But aside from the obvious impact on the field, the Nicholls coach said the pitcher’s largest impact to the team is her experience.

“I’m glad that she is a 23-year-old, fifth-year senior right now,” Parsons said. “Because being that mature makes her that much stronger on the mound.”

This season will be Gros’ last – which is a subject she isn’t always ready to discuss.

“I don’t really want to talk about that,” Gros joked. “This is it. This is all that I’ve ever dreamed of. Hopefully it lasts as long as it can, because I’m not ready for it to end.”

Gros plans to graduate with an allied health degree, concentrated in occupational therapy. She said she hopes to pursue graduate school in the same field, but said her future is not set in stone just yet.

“Professional softball would be a dream,” she said. “But we will just have to take that one day at a time and see how it unfolds.”

Nicholls senior pitcher Lacey Gros hurls a pitch for the Colonels earlier this season. Gros leads the team in nearly every statistical category in her final season with the team. * Photo provided by NSU