Catholic High School senior Jodi Suire, center, signed a national letter of intent this past Friday to play college softball at Louisiana College. With Suire are her parents, Jody and Rhonda Suire.

Catholic High senior Jodi Suire is looking forward to a new experience in college after signing a national letter of intent this past Friday to play softball at Louisiana College.

Suire plans to study nursing at the Pineville school. She’ll play catcher for the Wildcats softball team.

A showcase camp at Arceneaux Park in Broussard, featuring coaches from various schools, got her noticed by the Louisiana College coaching staff.

“I went to a showcase camp a year or two back, and they noticed me and got in touch, and it just started there,” Suire said.

She’s paid two visits to the school already and plans to head to college for the start of the fall semester.

“Oh, I loved it,” she said. “It was a beautiful campus.”

As for what she’d like to do to improve her game, Suire said she does some things well but wants to work on her technique throwing the ball to pick runners off or catch them stealing (throwdowns) and how quickly she gets the ball from the mitt to the fielder on throws (pop time).

“I want to exceed and fine-tune my skills,” Suire said. “My framing (of pitches) is very good, and I think the thing I need to work on most is my throwdowns and my pop time.”

The abrupt end to the 2020 spring athletic season and subsequent shutdown of sports essentially through the end of summer has led to a challenging start for this year’s CHS softball team, Suire said.

“After COVID it was hard to get back into the swing of things, so we’re looking a little rough right now, but we’re trying to get back to how we know we can play,” Suire said. “Teamwork is one of our biggest struggles right now, just coming together as a team.”

Like Suire, her parents — Jody and Rhonda Suire — are excited about her opportunity to attend college and continue playing softball.

“Oh yeah, they’re thrilled,” she said.

Suire signed during a ceremony at the Monsignor DeClouet Gymnasium. Also during the ceremony, teammate Laurie Badeaux signed with Millsaps College and two CHS baseball players also signed letters of intent, Zac Farris with Hendrix College and Carter Fletcher with Iowa Wesleyan.