Angela Tincher's senior softball season has barely begun, but she already knows the pro team she will be pitching for this coming summer.

The Virginia Tech ace was chosen by the Akron Racers with the third overall pick in the National Pro Fastpitch draft Monday.

Tincher, a James River High School graduate who earned All-America honors last spring, said she will sign with Akron after her senior season.

"I'm excited," Tincher said. "It's nice to already know where I'm going to be this summer.

"Being paid is definitely going to be nice."

Tincher was 38-7 with 617 strikeouts and a Division I-best 0.56 ERA last year. She is 4-1 with a 0.21 ERA and 63 strikeouts this season.

NPF "will be a rather easy transition for her," said Akron president and general manager Joey Arrietta, a former University of Akron coach. "I look for Angela to be the No. 1 pitcher on our team.

"We're trying to develop a league that is hopefully going to attract more and more a fan base of young kids, and you want to try to put our best foot forward. Talent for talent and person for person, she was the best out there."

National Pro Fastpitch is a six-team league with the season running from late May through August. It holds its amateur draft early in the college season so NPF teams have time to figure out their rosters. The clubs can't negotiate with draft picks until after their college careers have ended, though. Twenty-four players were drafted Monday.

The league includes such standout pitchers as Jennie Finch, Cat Osterman and Monica Abbott, although those three will likely miss this NPF season because of the Olympics.

The salary cap for an entire NPF team is just $100,000; squads have 14-20 players.

But Tincher won't be looking for an off-season job for the next few years, because she was admitted to Tech for graduate school last week. She plans to pursue an MBA.

Arrietta watched Tincher play for Tech last fall and talked to her to make sure she wanted to play professionally.

"I was totally impressed with her demeanor on the mound and her take-charge attitude," Arrietta said.

It remains to be seen how much Tincher will be able to pitch for Akron early this summer, because her arm won't have gotten any rest after her senior season.

"We're going to be careful," Arrietta said. "We're going to give her a chance to try get a little bit of rest early on and ... not to try to push her out there."

Tincher is looking forward to the chance to test herself against more experienced hitters.

"It's going to be older girls I'll be playing against now, more experienced, ... so it's going to be different," she said. "I really have no idea what to expect."