Hard work paid off for Gasti

Great things can come from humble beginnings. A case in point is former Carmichaels High School and University of Pittsburgh softball standout Nikki Gasti.
“My dad had everything to do with what I became as a player,” Gasti explained. “Truthfully, if it wasn’t for my dad and all the time he spent with me I wouldn’t have been what I was. I think I was nine when I went to my dad and said I wanted to be a pitcher. He said, ‘Nikki if you want to be a pitcher you are going to work at it because it’s an important position on the field. If you are going to do it, you are going to be the best pitcher that you can be.’ We started and my dad not knowing what he was doing had me start throwing and I did well for my age level, but we did a lot of things wrong too. He was out there with me every day.”
Gasti’s road to stardom didn’t happen overnight.
“Eventually I went to some camps down at California University of Pennsylvania,” Gasti said. “I went to camp with Rick Bertagnolli, who is an amazing coach. They videotaped me and he said, ‘She’s doing good, but she is doing this, this and this wrong. He had a list of six different things that I was doing wrong. He said, ‘You’ve got to change it and if you don’t change it you are only going to plateau, you’re going to stop and you’re never going to get any better.’
“My dad listened and he said, ‘We’re changing it.’ We went home and we changed everything, I was a mess for a couple months. I was throwing straight before and after that I was throwing the ball all over the place. My mom said, ‘You ruined her.’ My dad said to give it time. After a good few months of practice it finally clicked and I was throwing better than I ever was.”
Gasti had few opportunities to play early on.
“There are so many more opportunities for girls now,” Gasti stated. “When I played it was like 14-and-under and I was nine years old playing with the 14-year-olds. It was a lot of limited playing time as a nine year old. There were probably six to eight teams. When I was 12, I went to a travel team because there was some skill there. At that time there were only a couple of travel teams, like Metro Express, and they had a 16-and-under and an 18-and-under team. There was the Westmoreland team and a Johnstown team, but they were 18 and under. I started with Metro Express and played with them from 12 to 14 and then went to the Pittsburgh Patriots for three and a half years.”
Looking back she couldn’t envision what would happen when she started playing high school softball at Carmichaels.
“Not really,” she offered. “I knew that I was always working to be the best. I was working because I wanted my team to win, I had some competitiveness in me.”
She became the best as Carmichaels enjoyed unparallelled success with her pitching. The Mikes won four section crowns and won WPIAL titles in 1997 and 1998 and went 26-0 and defeated South Williamsport 5-2 in 1998 to win the PIAA championship. Gasti posted a record of 24-0 that season.
“Probably one of our toughest games was that championship game,” Gasti said.
She was on top of her game in the championship game allowing one hit and striking out eight.
“We had a great run,” Gasti stated. “I was really fortunate enough to play with some really great ballplayers throughout my high school career.”
Coach Rob Cole guided the Mikes to some great seasons.
“He was a wonderful coach,” Gasti said.
“I still have a great relationship with him.”
Gasti’s career numbers at Carmichaels are breathtaking. She was 68-7 and tossed eight perfect games and 13 no-hitters. In 455 career innings, she recorded 850 strikeouts and allowed only 15 earned runs for a 0.23 ERA. Even more impressive is that she only issued 27 walks.
“I had a lot of control and sometimes my control would hurt me,” Gasti said. “I was throwing the ball anywhere between 57 and 61 miles per hour in high school and that’s hard, if you get hit with the ball it’s going to hurt. But I never hit anybody, you never got up there and worried that you were going to get hit by me. My dad said you throw too many strikes, you need to start throwing some balls because they are not afraid of you. I had to start throwing balls on purpose. I hit my spots so well that it became a bit of a hindrance.”
Gasti was named the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Player of the Year in 1998, was twice named to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette All Star team, was a four-time Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Athlete of the Week, four-time Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Washington/Greene Player of the Year, chosen as a Fox 53/Tribune-Review Athlete of the Week, Greene County Messenger Athlete of the Year in 1998 and 1999, was honored guest at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Dapper Dan dinner and received the Special Recognition Award at the Washington/Greene County Coach of the Year banquet.
When she graduated from Carmichaels in 1999, Gasti accepted a softball scholarship to the University of Pittsburgh. She started off slowly at Pitt losing her first four starts before finishing her freshman year with a 10-10 record. She followed that with 7-17, 10-17 and 15-16 records for the Panthers.
“It was tough to lose in college,” Gasti said.
“A lot of times you would feel beaten down by it because you are used to feeling success when you got out on the field and it’s not coming easy anymore. We lost a lot of close games, 1-0, 2-1. We could never get it to click 100 percent.”
Despite the tough times, Gasti’s name is all over the Pitt record book. Her 42 career wins rank number three in Panther history. She is number three in career ERA at 2.54, number one in innings pitched 686.2, number one in shutouts with 17 and number two in complete games 61. She tossed two career no hitters for the Panthers and three times in her career was named Big East Pitcher of the Week.
Gasti was in communications at Pitt and considered a career in broadcasting after working for Fox Sports Pittsburgh. She decided to teach and got her masters from Pitt.
Divorced, she is the mother of a six-year old daughter, Bailey. Since 2005, she has been a kindergarten teacher in the Central Greene School District at Waynesburg Central Elementary School.
“Athletics led to a lot of good things,” Gasti said.
“It has been a fantastic ride.”