Softball Blog #1

Hello Tomcat Family & Friends!

After a 21 hour bus trip and a few wrong turns and bumps in the road, the Thiel College women’s softball team finally made it to sunny Clermont, Florida for their 2011 Spring Training camp at the Dot Richardson National Training Center. Once off the bus, we unpacked all of our belongings into our gorgeous condos and some of us made a Walmart trip to grab some snack foods and anything we forgot or needed. After a quick trip to Wally World, Mama Schafer made us a delicious home-cooked dinner consisting of pasta, salad and garlic bread to get us ready for our opening day.

Although the weather was up in the 70s for the first day of play – the game results did not turn out quite to the Lady Tomcats liking as they fell in both contests.

The first game of the day began at 9 a.m. against the Eagles of Emory University where junior ace, Kristen Moreland took the mound for Thiel. Although the Lady Tomcats held a stalemate with the Eagles through three solid innings of play, the fourth and fifth saw Emory posting two runs per inning before knocking in four more in the sixth to register the early win. Even though it was a solid defensive performance for the Lady Tomcats, the hits did not quite fall through in the same fashion as the lone hit came from freshman right fielder, Ashley Dolan in her first collegiate appearance at the plate.

Game two saw more life from the Thiel lineup as they jumped out on top of the Case Western Reserve University Spartans, 7-0 in the first inning thanks to a Becky Betteridge grand slam which scored Danielle Dwyer, Karen Wolfe and Molly Jo Everett. Unfortunately this would not be enough to give the Lady Tomcats their first win of the season as they fell in the final inning to a walk off homerun for a final score of 12-11. Leading the way with a perfect 5-5 performance at the dish was senior center fielder Laura Davin and senior catcher Melissa Rankin who was 3-5 with three doubles and four RBIs.

At the conclusion of the second game, with burnt faces and dirt marks across their uniforms, the Lady Tomcats softball team was forced to wait another two hours for their bus to be towed out of the sand because it had sunk throughout the course of the day. Once freed from the sinking sand pit, the Anderson bus was on its way back to the condos where the softball girls would enjoy another great home-cooked meal by Mama Schafer before enjoying a night of relaxation.

Tomorrow will be a brand new day for the Lady Tomcats as they will begin their double-header against the College of New Jersey at 9:30 a.m. and follow up with a contest against Moravian College at 11:30 a.m. As much as we miss all of you up in the cold state of Pennsylvania, we are enjoying the sunshine and looking towards two big wins tomorrow!

Until then, take care!

Love,

TCSB <3