Laura Remia '01 vies for even more softball records
   — in her spare time.

by Mike Warwick

When Coach Deb Pallozzi instituted a nontraditional fall season for the softball program in 1996, she knew that some of her players might not be able to participate because of the usual commitments - student teaching, playing a fall sport, or producing ICTV's Gridiron Report, the weekly football highlights show. Okay, maybe that last one isn't a common fall activity for college softball players. But Laura Remia is hardly a common student-athlete.

Remia had already fit two or three careers' worth of softball accomplishments into three seasons - all-American honors the past two years; a variety of all-region, all-conference, all-tournament, and all-academic awards; and a dozen school records - so it's only fitting that she's now fitting two or three people's worth of experience into her senior year.

A television-radio major who hopes to go into sports network production, Remia spent last summer in New York City interning with MSNBC. As a technical production intern, she worked with the network's technical production managers to coordinate live shots, booked studio time in cities around the world, and worked with satellite operations to make sure that remote shoots were set up. She cut her summer vacation short to return to Ithaca to begin preparing for Gridiron Report, the weekly football highlights show. Like all ICTV productions, Gridiron Report (which airs live on Sunday nights throughout the season) is student-run. As its producer, Remia is responsible for all aspects of the show, from preproduction to the Sunday broadcast. She supervises a crew of about 20 students, coordinating their assignments and travel arrangements. She conducts weekly postgame interviews with players and coaches on Saturday, then edits film and chooses highlights throughout the next day leading up to the live broadcast.

For the veteran of pressure-packed softball games (she's appeared in 16 NCAA playoff games in the past three seasons), sweating through each Sunday's broadcast is even more nerve-wracking than standing at the plate with two outs and the bases loaded in a tie game. "The at-bat doesn't take as long as the 30-minute show," Remia says. "And if I'm batting, I am in more control. During a broadcast there are about 15 people working at the same time. I tend to be nervous about everyone's performance."

Her hard work and dedication to both broadcasting and softball have paid dividends: after making an immediate impact as a freshman (after just 28 games she was the program's career leader in home runs), she has continued to play well while helping the team to some of its best seasons. As a sophomore and junior Remia earned second-team all-American honors, and the Bombers won NCAA and regional titles to advance to the Division III World Series both years.

Remia has set Ithaca records for single-season home runs (15), career home runs (35), career runs batted in (124), and career total bases (285) - and more records could be on the way. Her career home run total ranks among the all-time Division III leaders. But with all those numbers, setting any new record in front of her family - specifically her parents, Bill and Sharon Remia - would be the highlight of her senior season.

"My parents have seen nearly all my games," she says. "They've been to Florida every year for the spring trip, Wisconsin and Virginia for the World Series, New England, and almost everywhere else. The support they've shown me in softball and anything else I do has meant everything to me."

Photo of Remia at baseball by Tim McKinney