For more than three years they have been sentinels on the left side of Hempfield's infield.

Now, with their time as teammates measured in weeks, seniors Brittany Hammer and Christina Lausch look forward to the next step in their athletic journey, playing softball as scholarship athletes at the Division I level.

Hammer will play shortstop in the Big East Conference next year, attending Seton Hall on a full scholarship that is 60 percent athletic and 40 percent academic.

Lausch has accepted a 75 percent scholarship — split 50-50 between academic and athletic — to play third base at Marist University.

They are the first softball players in Hempfield history to earn Division I grants.

"To see it happening, especially for two girls who have played most of their lives together, is pretty neat," observed Knights' coach Cathy Riggs. "You hope having them (do it) inspires the rest of the team to want to get to that level."

It's a lofty level.

Lausch backed up last season's .413 L-L batting average with a .429 mark this year, knocking in 17 runs.

Hammer hit .431 last year and led the Knights with 25 runs scored. She topped that by hitting over .500 during last year's travel-ball season.

As one might surmise, given the weight of the academic portion of their offers, both excel in the classroom as well as on the diamond.

Both are members of Hempfield's chapter of the National Honor Society. Hammer carries a 4.0 grade-point average and is ranked 31st in Hempfield's 600-plus-member Class of 2009. Lausch has a 3.9 GPA and is ranked 63rd.

While they have been standout players for the Black Knights since they were freshmen, it was their exploits in out-of-season travel ball that garnered the attention of their collegiate suitors. Both play for the Delco Diamonds, a premier travel program out of southeast Pennsylvania.

Hammer, a Diamonds veteran of several seasons, had been on the recruiting radar for some time.

Lausch, who joined Delco last Fall, caught the eye of Marist interim head coach Joe Ausanio at a tournament.

"I had never heard of Marist before I talked to him," recounted Lausch, a three-time L-L All-Star. "He was there to see one of the other players on our team. As he was packing up, getting ready to leave, I was up to bat and I hit a home run!"

That got Ausanio's attention, but Hammer already had Seton Hall's unrequited attention.

Early in the process Hammer's affections leaned in the direction of Rutgers University and the University of Pittsburgh.

"The Big East is the conference I always dreamed of playing in," said Hammer, a First-Team Class AAAA All-State selection last year and four-time L-L All-Star.

"(But) Seton Hall was not one of my top options at first. It was kind of ironic how it ended up. They started contacting me and it just went from there."

Both girls appear to be joining programs on the upside of a rebuilding climb.

In his 13th year at the helm of the Pirates, coach Ray Vander May guided Seton Hall to a 24-30-1 overall record this year, 10-14 in the Big East.

Marist went 9-7 in the recently concluded Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference schedule, 16-33 overall as Ausanio completed his first year as the Red Foxes' boss.

The scholarships are the culmination of careers that began at age 9 for Hammer, age 7 for Lausch.

Hammer picked up the game when her family moved from Iowa to Lancaster, playing for East Petersburg, then switching over to the Hempfield Youth Association to play 12-and-under.

Her path meshed with Lausch's when the two became members of the Donegal/Rheems Stingers Under-12 travel team.

Hammer left to play with the Pennsylvania Mystics, and then the Delco Diamonds, where Lausch rejoined her last fall.

Now their paths diverge once more. But they'll get to see each other at least once a year as the two schools meet in the middle of the season for a non-conference game.

"Our freshman year it will be at Seton Hall," Lausch reminded Hammer.

•••

Hammer and Lausch are just two members of a bumper crop of softball recruits emerging from the L-L this year.

Four L-L standouts will continue their careers at Division I schools.

Elizabethtown's Becca Bigler (Hofstra), Donegal's Morgan Kibler (Jacksonville University) and Manheim Central's Kayla Cook (Temple) have accepted athletic scholarships — full rides for Bigler and Cook — and Conestoga Valley's Megan Blank is heading for George Mason University.

The PSAC is in the future for a pair of standout catchers as Lampeter-Strasburg's Katie Lynch and E-town's Anna Libby have received partial offers to play at, respectively, Kutztown and Millersville.

Hempfield's Lindsey Cooper and Donegal's Whitney Breneman have accepted academic scholarships as part of the recruiting class at Elizabethtown College.

Also playing at the Division III level next season will be Donegal's Taylor Hatt (Messiah) and Manheim Central's Janelle Fair (Eastern).

E-mail: dbyrne@lnpnews.com