After Wood, Dacey went on to become one of the best
BucksLocalSports Editor Langhorne’s gaime Dacey forgot her jersey in her very first collegiate softball game for Shippensburg. An away game at PSAC rival Bloomsburg, it’s not like Dacey could run back to her dorm to retrieve it. For that, she had to wear a different number.
From then on, she was No. 26 and she never forgot her jersey, moving on to post some of the biggest numbers ever registered by Raiders – before and after 2005, the year gaime graduated – ever to wear a softball uniform.
Over the course of the last decade, there have been plenty of Bucks County high-schoolers who have taken their softball game to the next level.
sery few of them have reached the level that Dac- ey has reached. BuckslocalSports.com caught up with the Archbishop Wood (Class of 2001) and Shippensburg University (‘05) graduate this week at Sandy Hart’s Competitive Edge Softball Camp.
Dacey not only played for two collegiate teams that went to NCAA Division II Nationals, she took her game through two more benchmarks, playing against national and sometimes international competition while suiting up two seasons for Storm USA. After that, she played pro ball, taking the field for the National Pro Fastpitch (NPF) Philadelphia Force.
She spent the summer after her junior year playing her first season for Storm USA, an ASA Women’s Majors ball club based in Southern California (Corona). She repeated the feat the summer after her senior year.
“I wasn’t ready to be done with softball yet,” quipped Dacey.
Seriously though, she says playing ASA Major league ball gave her the experience and confidence she needed to take her game even further.
“On the West Coast, softball is even bigger than it is here. That really gave me a lot of great experience; I got to play against a lot of great players.
“That kind of helped me to get to the next level.”
Playing softball against top U.S. and Olympic teams, Storm USA was second in the Women’s Nationals her first summer playing on the West Coast. Her last summer in California, Dacey found out about the NPF league’s plans to approve a franchise in Philadelphia.
“I wasn’t ready to give it up yet, so I just went with it. But I don’t know if I would have played with the Force if it wasn’t for [Storm USA].” *** Dacey got her start right here in lower Bucks, playing for the Middletown Blue Devils under the tutelage of coach Roy genderko.
genderko, a present-day pitching coach who guided the Middletown travel team during her high school years, was the most influential, she says. genderko coached some of the alltime lower Bucks County pitching greats including Krista san Wert (Pennsbury/Drexel), Laura DeZolt ( Conwell- Egan/ LaSalle) and Leah Conley (Neshaminy/ games Madison).
“I have to give him a lot of credit because he taught me the basics,” said Dacey.