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Sports

You Picked It: Harrison Female Athlete of the Year, GiGi LoDolce

After a week and over 350 votes Harrison has elected catcher GiGi LoDolce Harrison's 2009-10 female athlete of the year.

On Monday we revealed the results of the Harrison athlete of the year poll. During a week-long vote, 43 percent of participants chose GiGi LoDolce over Melissa Shulman, Ashley Marino, Emily Singer and Samantha Stump, all of whom were well-deserving athletes.

LoDolce was excited that she had the opportunity for the award when she first found out about it and said she felt that having the public decide the winner would make it harder to predict.

"I was happy I was nominated," she said. "The fact that all different people got to choose who the winner was, made me wonder what the outcome would be."

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This year LoDolce played nearly every game for the Huskies behind the plate, and she always was in the middle the Harrison lineup. Even when she wasn't hitting the ball well, the coaching staff kept her in the four or five spot because LoDolce put the ball in play and was often able to create offense without getting hits.

Defensively, LoDolce may have been Harrison's biggest asset. From behind the plate she often called pitches and relayed the coaches desired fielding positions to the players.

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"She is a great catcher," said Harrison's Jenna Webb. "She would try her hardest behind the plate and she was a key asset to our strong defense."

LoDolce was also very proud of her defensive accomplishments in her senior season. She threw out an overwhelming majority of the runners who attempted to steal on her. She also kept runners from advancing by blocking many pitches in the dirt.

"Blocking the plate was definitely the highlight of my year," LoDolce said. "There was no way I was letting one ball by me, so knowing that I stopped every ball was really important to me."

This year LoDolce's performance was a little under-the-radar at times because of Harrison's record-setting pitching staff. But Harrison's voters recognized a catcher as the school's athlete of the year.

"It makes me happy to know that people think that I'm that good of an athlete," LoDolce said. "I'm not exactly used to it, nor do I look for it, so it's nice to have recognition."

LoDolce was named all-league, all-section, and she was just informed that she was recently named fifth team all-state. Next year LoDolce will be joining the New Haven Chargers who ended the 2010 season ranked 16th nationally in their division.

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