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YSU softball team on a roll entering Horizon League tournament
Penguins closed
season on 24-9 run
YOUNGSTOWN
Teams often use the metaphor of calling their season a roller coaster. But it would be difficult to find a team that has had lower lows and higher highs than the Youngstown State softball team.
YSU’s overall record of 29-26 won’t raise many eyebrows, but the Penguins started the season 0-9, and won just two of their first 15 games.
Now YSU has won 12 of its last 14 games, sweeping their past four conference opponents and what was once a 5-7 Horizon League record has become 17-7, good enough for the second seed and a first-round bye in this week’s Horizon League Tournament in Chicago. YSU will play Valparaiso today at 6 p.m. after the Crusaders defeated Oakland in their first-round game.
If this were a roller coaster, hands would be raised in anticipation right now. If the Penguins win three straight, they’ll go to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2006.
“[The excitement level is] out of this world right now,” YSU junior Hannah Lucas said. “Since I’ve been here we haven’t been ranked this high in the tournament. To know we can win the tournament in three games is beyond exciting for us.”
So what’s changed for the Penguins during this 24-9 run over the second-half of the season? YSU head coach Brian Campbell said it’s been the offense. In nine of its first 15 games this season, YSU scored one or zero runs. During this 12-game winning steak through the Horizon League, the Penguins are averaging 7.4 runs. Four of those 12 wins were ended early due to the mercy rule.
“We’ve gotten clutch hitting when we needed it,” Campbell said. “It’s not always been the long ball, either. It’s singles, it’s moving runners, it’s scoring runners. The other day we had five hits, but scored six runs. It’s nice to see the clutch hitting.”
Lucas said the bats began to come alive during a series at Northern Kentucky that immediately preceded the Penguins’ romp though the rest of their conference schedule. The Norse, who finished seventh in the league, missing the conference tournament entirely, beat YSU 9-0. The Penguins managed only one hit. But Lucas said it wasn’t for lack of opportunities.
“NKU was a very frustrating series,” Lucas said. “That one game we only had four strikeouts. We were putting the ball in play but it wasn’t working. We had hard groundouts, lineouts hit right at defenders. We had solid contact it was just going straight at people.”
Senior Brittney Moffatt said it took more than just the usual practices to turn the team’s offensive woes around.
“A lot of us would come in for extra hitting,” Moffatt said. “We were also looking at the pitchers we’d be going up against next and study what we believed we were going to be up against with them.”
Now, despite the added pressure of a double-elimination tournament, Lucas said the team is playing as confidently as ever.
“I think we’ll even be a little more focused and driven [during the tournament] which will be good for us,” Lucas said. “I don’t think we’ll have any doubt we can win this and we can win it in three games. We won’t be worried about anybody else.”