Not too cool for school
Home-schooled senior contributes for Howell
For the past three years she spent the majority of her mornings and afternoons in the break room of her parents' dental office doing homework while taking occasional breaks to chat with patients and employees.
She was essentially her own teacher."Once you get to high school you can pretty much teach yourself everything," Ackerman said. "We bought books from a home-schooling organization and they'd give me a lesson plan of what I had to do each day and what pages to read and when to take tests."
Ackerman played select softball for the Missouri Diamondcats, which helped generate exposure to college recruiters. She is orally committed to attend and play for Big Ten school Northwestern.
Although she loved the independence of home schooling, she saw the benefits of attending a public school. Now enrolled as a senior at Francis Howell, she's preparing for college both in the classroom and on the softball diamond.
Howell softball coach Rusty Elifritz, who knew Ackerman from middle-school softball camps, knew that she would make a big contribution to what was already one of the county's strongest softball programs.
"Her mom contacted me and asked me if I would be interested in taking a look at her," Elifritz said. "I said 'Absolutely.' I took a look at her and she was exactly what I thought she was. I was happy that she was interested in coming to high school."
Ackerman has made a seamless transition to her new team, which has made it to the Class 4 quarterfinal round in two of the past three years. She has settled in as its No. 3 hitter and is the team leader in home runs (two), triples (two) and RBIs (11) as the Vikings are off to an 8-1 start.
It hasn't taken opposing teams long to take notice of her offensive abilities, as she already leads the team with seven walks including four Tuesday in the Vikings' 8-0 win against Warrenton. She also had four stolen bases in the game, which is unusual because she plays catcher on defense.
"She's one of the few girls in 20 years of coaching that I don't courtesy run for," Elifritz said. "She steals on her own and when they walk her it's almost like a double or a triple because she can steal one base and sometimes two."
Her versatility doesn't end there. Elifritz went on to say that Northwestern recruited her not only as a catcher, but as a shortstop. She has an above-average throwing arm, which was a deciding factor in the Vikings' 1-0 season-opening win against Cor Jesu on Aug. 25.
"Those are pretty rare skills," he said. "That combination usually doesn't go together."
When Ackerman is behind the plate she catches for one of the area's top pitching talents in senior pitcher Kristen Felker, who is well on her way to another strong year.
"She brings the heat," Ackerman said. "She's got the rise ball and a really good changeup and it keeps people of balance."
Ackerman may have already been destined for great things in the fields of math and science, but her father, who died of a heart attack when she was 8-years-old, was the one who got her started on softball.
She said that softball, as well as chatting with the people who came through the dentist's office, was a way of keeping her social life active during her home-schooling years.
Returning to school will not only prepare her for college through advanced classes and practice of different time-management skills, it will also give her a chance to compete against teams and players she hasn't seen before.
"I thought it would be fun to come back my senior year," she said. "Just being able to go to high school and meet a bunch of new people. My friends always talked about how their high school seasons were going and I was like 'I want to play.'"
"She's played on some high-level select teams so she's well prepared for high school ball," Elifritz said. "She kind of brings the attitude that it's cool to be a female athlete. All of our girls have kind of rallied behind that."
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