STORRS, Conn. -- On the day she officially became one of the University of Louisville's newest graduates, Melissa Roth stared into a blue sky hundreds of miles away from the commencement ceremonies. Rather than fidget with a rented gown or pull a tassel from one side of a mortarboard to the other, she adjusted her chest protector, slipped her fingers through the bars of a catcher's mask and pulled it firmly over her face as she crouched in the dirt behind home plate.
Roth can claim her diploma when she returns to campus, but she was happier wearing the tools of ignorance than cap and gown on her graduation day.
"Mel has a passion for the game; she loves the game," Louisville coach Sandy Pearsall said after her team swept a doubleheader at Connecticut. "She lives it, breathes it. I mean, I think that's what really makes her different. There's nobody [else] I know right now on my team who probably spends every minute thinking about softball."
It hasn't been time wasted for the All-American. When Roth does take off the uniform for the final time at Louisville, she'll rank among the program's all-time leaders in every significant offensive statistical category. She's already the all-time leader in runs and doubles, ranks second in walks, home runs and RBIs and third in hits. A catcher and one of the nation's best sluggers, she's even fifth in stolen bases.
Say what you want about compiling those numbers in the Big East, a conference still looking to prove itself among softball's elite, but Roth not only made the United States national team that traveled to the Pan American qualifying tournament last summer -- she hit .476 with 11 RBIS in 13 games while catching pitchers like Monica Abbott.
Back at Louisville, she's hitting .405 with a 1.345 OPS this season. Her .850 slugging percentage entering the weekend was good enough to rank ninth in the nation, but she was also in the midst of a three-week hitting funk as she arrived in Connecticut for the final weekend of the regular season.
Even with the Cardinals in good shape for an NCAA tournament at-large bid should they lose at home in next week's Big East tournament, she could hear the clock ticking.
"I'd say probably like the last three weeks, a little bit, I've kind of felt that, 'Oh my gosh, the season's coming to and end.'" Roth said. "But then I've just got to kind of look back and realize, 'You know what, if we play our softball and our teams plays [our softball], the sky's the limit.' My season could go another month."
Counting the days and hours remaining isn't the mark of someone having a brief fling with the game. And Roth is in it for the long haul. She carried on the family trade when she first put on the catching gear, which wasn't long after she first picked up a softball. Both parents were catchers. A brother is a catcher. Even her nephews are strapping on the shin guards in Little League these days. And on the rare occasions she gets a chance to go home to California on break, she's often at a local field by seven or eight in the morning, working on her own hitting or watching and working with youth teams -- she's already coached kids from 10 years old up through 18-and-under travel ball.
That lifelong relationship likely won't end when her college career does -- she was drafted by National Pro Fastpitch's USSSA Pride. But as Pearsall put it, there's just something different about playing the college game.
As her stay in Connecticut came to an end, Roth came up with three hits in her final five at-bats, not counting a tape-measure shot that drifted just foul late in the final game of Saturday's doubleheader. Her teammates, particularly Chelsea Bemis and Alicja Wolny, picked up the slack in the interim weeks. And perhaps now, with graduation gone and the postseason here, she can just enjoy what's left.
"I really feel like it's going so fast," Roth said. "We're down to the last month of softball, and I can't believe it. Technically, I just graduated [Saturday], but I just can't believe it's gone by so fast.
"I don't know, I guess it's been the best four years of my life."
Graham Hays covers women's college softball for ESPN.com. E-mail him at Graham.Hays@espn3.com. Follow him on Twitter: @grahamhays.
