The Western Nebraska Community College softball team’s road to a national tournament begins Thursday when they face Miami Dade College. The No. 14-seed Cougars, 43-19, face off against the No. 3 Sharks (46-7-1) at 12:30 p.m. at the Canyon Softball Complex in St. George, Utah. The winner advances to a 7 p.m. contest against the winner of the Blinn College (44-9) and Temple College (33-20) game, while the losers of the two games fall into the loser’s bracket with a 4:30 p.m. contest.
WNCC is playing in their second national tournament in three years. In 2008, the Cougar women went 0-2 at Plant City, Fla. This year’s team is not content of just playing two games and going home; they want to make a statement that they belong.
“We are very excited to be at the national tournament,” freshman Megan Bourdon said. “I think it is a great opportunity. We were looking on the Internet of who we were going to play against and saw all the different schools from all over the country. Especially for me, being from Canada, I get to play teams from Miami, Arizona.”
Miami Dade will not be easy to upend. The Sharks finished second in the regular season polls. The Sharks are 6-2-1 in their last nine games, including dropping a 14-0 game to Chipola College in the Florida State Championship game.
The Sharks have two of the top three pitchers in the nation. Geovanny Nunez leds the nation with a whopping .36 earned run average. Nunez is 14-2 on the season with 108 strike outs and allowed just 17 runs. Just as impressive is Erika Bennett, who is third in the nation with a .46 ERA. Bennett is 19-1 on the season with 184 strike outs and allowed just 19 runs.
The Cougars are playing their best softball at the end of the season. Bourdon said after their Arizona spring break trip, this team has clicked. They went 3-9 over the 10-day spring break trip. Since then, they are 29-8, including winning 24 of their last 27 games.
“We have come a long ways since Arizona,” Bourdon said. “By us coming together as a team, we definitely made it happen. In Arizona, I doubt anybody was going to say we were going to win the regional championship, but we put it together and that is what it takes.
What makes this team special is that there really isn’t one player the team counts on to win a game – everybody had clutch game-winning hits or runs. Freshman Jordan Schoepflin was named Region IX player of the year and was the NJCAA player of the week in mid April. Schoepflin, from Arvada, Colo., is batting .392 with 58 runs scores, 57 RBIs and seven home runs.
Katie Groves, last year’s freshman of the year, is having another MVP season. Groves, from Bluffdale, Utah, is second in the nation in RBIs (86) and runs scored (89). She is batting .505 on the season with 15 home runs. She now has 32 home runs in her two-years at the college.
These two are just part of a team. In the Cougars’ 11-2 Region IX championship win on May 9, the Cougars erupted for eight seventh-inning runs. In that inning, Jacqui Cappuccilli, of Las Vegas, Nev., hammered her fifth home run of the season.
The Cougars have plenty of deep threats as just two of the active players have not hit a home run. Ashton Hughes has hit 11 home runs followed by Brittany Chacon and Bourdon with five each.
“That is it with our team that we are all equal and we have confidence in everyone,” Bourdon said. “In every at bat whoever goes up to the plate, I have no doubt that they can win the game for us.”
The Cougars are also a late-inning team as they have mounted comebacks from the fifth inning on.
“We never get down,” Bourdon said. “The sixth-inning is our inning. Hopefully we can make something happen at the national tournament and get a couple of wins.”
To get a couple of wins, though, the team needs to click on all cylinders.
“We need to have good pitching and hitting,” she said. “It seems like the defense is fine. Our defense has been pretty good the whole year. As long as we don’t think about the national tournament, we will be fine.”
Other first round games at the national tournament include No. 1 Salt Lake Community College, Utah, (59-3) against No. 16 Pitt Community College, N.C. (39-11); No. 8 Seward County Community College, Kansas, (47-12) against No. 9 Seminole State Community College, Okla., (43-12); No. 5 Yavapai College, Ariz., (50-14) against No. 12 Indian Hills Community College, Iowa, (33-22); No. 13 John A. Logan College, Ill., against No. 4 Wallace State Community College, Ala., (56-7); No. 3 Miami Dade College, Fla., (45-7-1) against WNCC (43-19); No. 6 Blinn College, Texas, (44-9) against No. 11 Temple College, Texas, (33-20); No. 15 Georgia Perimeter College, Ga., (28-13) against No. 2 Chipola College, Fla., (47-11); and No. 7 Chattanooga State College, Tenn., (51-12) against No. 10 Odessa College, Texas, (33-27).
WNCC games can be heard on KOZY 101.3 FM as well as the web at kozy1013.com. The games will also be video streamed on the Internet at PSBlive.com.
The championship game is slated for Saturday afternoon. Bourdon said they can make a run at the national tournament.
“I think we can. We just need to have confidence,” she said. “I think we are going in there scared a little bit, but as long as we are confident that we can beat anyone, we should be able to win.”
National tournament notebook
** Two WNCC players or student assistants have been at the national tournament before. Student assistant coach Natasha Dypchey was a member of the 2008 Cougar team that went to the national tournament. Freshman Megan Bourdon also was at nationals in 2008, but she was watching her sister Lauren play for the Cougars. Bourdon said
“It was fun watching them, especially seeing how happy they were getting to play,” Bourdon said. “I know how happy she was and I am feeling the same way.”
Bourdon knows a little bit about the teams that will be there – they all are good.
“Seeing them play against those teams, I know there will be a lot better pitching, better hitters and everything at nationals,” she said. “We just have to be ready to go and have fun.”
** The Canyons Complex will not be new for several of the Cougar players as many have played at the complex in the past. The players that have played at the complex include Katie Groves (March 2008), Allie Alverson (March 2009), Jacqui Cappuccilli (June 2009), Taylor Anderson (March 2008 and July 2008), and Stephanie Townsend (July 2008).
No comments:
Post a Comment