Krantz just finished her sophomore year at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts, and while her freshman softball season started off a little slow she has became a stalwart on the Lady Skyhawks pitching staff. She led the team in pitching this season with an 8-6 record and a 2.37 earned run average in 85.2 innings pitched. She pitched in 20 games this season, the most for any Stonehill pitcher, and started 12 games, which was second on the staff.

Krantz is no stranger to earning honors in softball. She was named All County three times, All Tournament twice, All State twice and League VII and League VIII Pitcher of the Year her junior and senior years, respectively, at Hampton Bays. Krantz was named Northeast-10 Pitcher of the Week on April 13 when she went 3-0 with a 0.75 ERA with 17 strikeouts and four walks in 18.2 innings pitched and held opposing batters to a .164 batting average in four appearances. She was also named Ace's Student-Athlete of the Week the same week.

Ken LeGrice just finished his first year coaching at Stonehill and said Krantz would be a full-time starter on any other team in the conference, but since he likes to use all of his pitchers as starters and relievers, Krantz gets to see the circle more often.

“I expect all of my pitchers to be ready and come in and help out when needed,” he said. “Usually, the more relief stuff they do means the higher confidence I have in that pitcher. Sami, in the past, has had the ability to leave [baserunners] right where they are. She's a great kid, works hard at what she does. She's a good catalyst for the team, does a lot to keep the girls up. She's a very unselfish player.”

Krantz came back to the island on March 28 and started a game against Dowling College and former East Hampton star pitcher Jessie Stavola. The game wound up being a tough, 1-0 loss to Dowling as Krantz couldn't match Stavola's one-hit, 18 strikeout performance in eight innings. While the loss was tough for Krantz, she said she enjoyed coming back home and pitching in front of friends and family.

“Every year we used to scrimmage East Hampton, so we do know each other,” Krantz said of Stavola. “I said hi to her before the game. It was a great game that went into extra innings. [Stavola] pitched a great game, but our team still played great. It was fun playing against her.”

The biggest change Krantz has had to make at the college level, she said, was pitching with a different mindset. In high school, if she didn't have 15 strike outs, she thought she'd have a bad game regardless of the outcome. In the preseason of her freshman year, Stonehill went on its annual trip to Florida to play 10 games. Krantz didn't get to play much in those games, but when she did she had to make the adjustment of being a strike out pitcher to being a pitcher who uses her defense. She ended her freshman season strong and it carried over to her sophomore season.

“It was a big adjustment,” she said. “Having a year under my belt I feel more comfortable and confident as a pitcher.”

One of the toughest things Krantz has had to deal with at the college level is being a student athlete. An NCAA Division II athlete does not get the same luxuries as a Division I player, such as having a tutor for the team. The Lady Skyhawks played in 44 games in six weeks, had weekend games to attend and sometimes would have to travel almost five hours for away games.

The fact that Krantz is a multiple sport athlete in college doesn't make things easier. Stonehill's field hockey team was ranked third in the country this past season and Krantz had to sit on the bench for the first time in her life. Since she's always busy with either field hockey or softball, the one thing Krantz misses out on is bonding with her teammates during each team's offseason. Field hockey is played in the fall and softball is played in the spring. She said if it weren't for her busy schedule throughout her high school career it would have been that much harder to adjust to playing two sports and dealing with her studies.

“I was always busy doing this, that and the other thing,” she said of her high school life. “If I was a regular student, I wouldn't have been ready.”

Choosing a college was very hard for Krantz. She went on a tour of a number schools in the New England area but when she first pulled into Stonehill she fell in love with the campus, she said. But Krantz was put on the waiting list and had to look into other schools. Krantz considered Western New England College after an official visit there where she did an overnight with the basketball team, which she could have played on. But two hours after handing in her deposit there, she got a phone call from Stonehill saying she was off the waiting list and Western New England College became an afterthought. Although she won't be able to live out her dream of playing collegiate basketball, Krantz says she's happy where she is.

“I think I like how small it is,” she said of Stonehill. “Coming from a small town, tight-knit community, it would have been harder for me to adjust to a bigger school. I'm not too much out of my comfort zone here.”

After dabbling in secondary education her freshman year of college, Krantz is now going the route of psychology and wants to do something in grief counseling after she graduates. Krantz lost her mother to cancer her junior year of high school, as did two other players on the Hampton Bays softball team, and another parent was lost in a car accident, and it had a huge impact on her, she said. After taking a psychology class she became very interested in the subject and wants to use that background to help children who have gone through the same situation she did. There is a bereavement camp on Shelter Island, where she's looking to intern this summer, and she wants to start one of her own camps in the future.