VALRICO, Fla. – Any time Natalie Cable steps into the circle, she has one goal in mind.

“How can I pitch to this girl? How can I make her feel less confident?” said the Bloomingdale pitcher. “Sometimes you can see when they come into the box, that they’re a little rattled, or they don’t feel as confident, and that’s when you hit them with the inside or outside pitch to get those swing and misses.”

Natalie has caused many batters to swing and miss this season. More than any other pitcher in Florida, in fact. The Bloomingdale ace leads the state with nearly 250 strikeouts.

“It’s kind of like stunning, I don’t know. It feels good. I’m glad I can help my team this way and do as much as I can to get us where we are," she told Spectrum News. 

What’s really remarkable is that Natalie is doing all this in just her first season of high school softball.

"When she first came out I was like, 'who’s this new girl, a freshman?'” said Bloomingdale catcher Megan Jones-Ortiz. “Then, I caught her for the first time, and I was like, holy cow, this girl has potential. I always tell her you’re going to make it. You’re going to go far.”

“I definitely had a lot of confidence,” said Bloomingdale head coach Leah Pemberton. “You can just tell by the way she carries herself and she works harder than anyone else I’ve seen in a very long time, so I knew that wouldn’t surprise me. But seeing how she played against some of the better teams we played was really shocking to me.”

Though her high school career is just getting started, Natalie has her sights set on playing in college. And thanks to her older sister, who plays at MIT, she already has an idea of what to expect at the next level.

“I’ve been getting help from my older sister, Mikayla. Her MIT workouts, sometimes she’ll send them to me so I can experience the college kind of level of what she’s doing.”

In just one season, Natalie has established herself as one of the best pitchers in the Tampa Bay area, and the bad news for opposing hitters is she’s just getting started.

“I just want to be at the top. I want to be the best.”