Walking out to the Tampa Spartans’ softball field, Heather Van Landingham and Deanna Henriott are all smiles, talking and laughing the whole way.

“She’s my friend,” Van Landingham said of Henriott. But these two have much more in common than just friendship.

For one thing, both girls are the ace pitchers for the nationally-ranked UT softball team. They chose this school for similar reasons.

“I really liked this school when I came,” Van Landingham said. “I got a good feel for it. I know they had a good business school. And also recruiting. I liked the coaches. The pitching coach [Jaci Davis] is really, really good.”

“I liked how small the school is,” said Henriott, who broke the school’s strikeout record in 2008 with 251. “And it was close to home, but far enough away to where I was on my own during the week. I really liked the coaches and how they coached everyone.”

Van Landingham, now a junior, showed Henriott, currently a sophomore, the ropes when the latter arrived in 2008.

“I tried to be a mentor,” Van Landingham said. “I don’t know how good of a job I did. [Laughs] But I tried to tell her how everything was here and take her under my wing.”

Each can also say she has done a good job on the mound for the Spartans this season. Through Mar. 28, Van Landingham is 7-2 with a 2.23 ERA, while Henriott is one of the conference’s best pitchers at 13-4 with her ERA at 0.85.

“Right now, she’s healthier than me,” Van Landingham admitted. “So right now she is dominating more than I am.”

Head Coach Leslie Kanter still praises her pitchers equally.

“They’re probably the strongest one and two pitchers in our conference,” Kanter said. “I don’t think there is another team that has two top pitchers like we do. We had it last year, but it’s even better this year because we have a better team behind them. It’s not usual that you can go from game to game and feel just as confident with each pitcher as you do with the other.”

“If we’re not feeling it one day or our stuff isn’t working, we don’t have to freak out because we’re going to lose,” Van Landingham said. “We know we have somebody behind us.”

They are both talented pitchers, but are they the same pitcher in two different bodies?

“We’re pretty much the same, I would say in almost everything,” Van Landingham said. “Our speed, how our ball breaks. Overall we’re the same.”

Not so, Kanter claims.

“The difference is, Heather wears her feelings on her sleeve,” Kanter said. “When she gets mad about something you can see it. Deanna doesn’t. However, they’re both very good pitchers and I have a lot of confidence in both of them. But they’re definitely different. They’re not the same.”

Of course, however, they can always lay claim to that one common bond: their friendship.

“We’re close as friends,” Van Landingham said. “So it helps that she’s always going to have my back no matter what. We don’t get mad at each other for it. We don’t hate each other. [Laughs] If she’s doing better than me, I’m not going to have any animosity toward her.”

“Yes, we’re definitely friends,” Henriott added.

“They’ve always gotten along,” Kanter said. “They get along great. They back each other, they cheer for each other in the dugout. If one of them is not doing well and the other goes in for her, she’s fine. Their personalities are such that they’re very happy people. They’re fun, they want to play, they want to win. They both would pitch every game if they could.”

They also like how this bond spreads through to the entire team and helps them win with teamwork and group leadership.

“We have very, very good chemistry this year,” Van Landingham said. “We don’t have the cliques. Everybody pretty much gets along with everybody else. So it helps a lot on the field.”

“We have relied on our seniors to be our leaders,” Kanter said. “It’s everyone else that has to get going and score some runs for [our pitchers] and play defense behind them. So I think those are more our leaders as far as getting the team going. But Heather and Deanna are leaders too because if we don’t have good pitching, we’re not going to win the game. That’s how it is.”

Through Mar. 28, the Spartans are 21-6 on the season. Their success has started and ended in the pitcher’s circle, where friends have become aces and aces have become winners.

-Brenton Burkett

Brenton can be reached at bburkett@ut.edu