New Castle rising star may be hard to ignore
Mangieri looks to go from overlooked to household name after Pitt signing
New Castle junior shortstop Keara Mangieri didn’t make the all-state softball team last season. She wasn’t even a first-team all-section pick out of Class 5A Section 3.
But she understands what kind of a challenge the coaches had in picking the four infielders who did make the all-section team.
“I don’t really know how all the voting works, but I know that there are a lot of really good players in the section that I’m in, and it’s tough to be an all-section player,” Mangieri said. “There’s a lot of amazing shortstops in the section where I play, but it is what it is.”
She’s not kidding. Of the four players chosen as infielders for the first team last year, Mars’ Annalyn Isaacs is playing at Mount Aloysius, Moon grad Ava Karpa is now at Westminster, Western Beaver first baseman Izzie LeFebvre is back after being picked to the all-state team, and West Allegheny junior Aubrey Police is committed to Villanova.
This year, though, Mangieri may be hard to ignore, especially after making a verbal commitment in February to play in the ACC at Pitt.
Mangieri could be one of the rising stars in WPIAL softball. Before committing to Pitt, Mangieri also had conversations with coaches from Robert Morris and Malone but opted for the Panthers.
“I went to one of their team camps with my travel team [Texas Glory PA] in the fall of last year and, as soon as I got there, the atmosphere was great, and I really loved it,” Mangieri said. “I kept going back to their camps and getting to know the coaches more and more. I reached out to them, they obviously reached out to me, we set up a visit and it just happened.”
It’s not a surprise that she got a touch overlooked last year. There aren’t many players on teams that go 6-14 overall and 1-9 in section play who are first-team locks. So, instead, she went the travel ball route to get noticed.
“I honestly didn’t really go to camps a lot until recently. I started pretty late with that,” Mangieri said. “Obviously, my high school team hasn’t had the opportunity to compete [for a championship] in the section we are in, which is a really hard section. It’s hard to compete with some of the schools we play against, so that makes it kind of difficult, but we’re always working to get better.”
She certainly showed what she was capable of on Monday. In the team’s season opener at home against Shenango, she went 3 for 3, scored three runs and stole five bases in the Red Hurricanes’ 8-3 win.
Last season she finished the year with a .400 batting average and six homers, 19 RBI, 17 stolen bases, 27 runs scored and a .818 slugging percentage.
But she also knows there is room for improvement, especially now that a lot of eyes that may not have looked at her in the past will be on her now.
“I think I just want to have fun, play and go to Pitt,” Mangieri said. “This year I get to play with my younger sister so, hopefully, we can do better with a lot of the younger girls coming up.”