Softball in Utah: Chattanooga State gets fresh chance
Chattanooga State softball coach Blythe Golden knows St. George, Utah.
Her players are becoming familiar with it now, but none of them had seen the Beehive State before arriving for the NJCAA Division I national tournament that starts there Wednesday. While the Lady Tigers have been frequent participants in the nationals — even winning the championship in 2012 — they didn’t get past the region tourney they hosted as favorites last year, and no players are left from the group that went in 2017.
“We’re all pretty excited,” freshman first baseman Ashlyn Holland from Fort Payne said before the team’s departure. “We’ve worked hard to get there, and Coach has told us about it.”
They’ve seen some of it for themselves the last few days, and Golden said “they say it’s unlike anything they’ve ever seen before. They’ve taken a million pictures.”
This is her fourth trip in her seven seasons at Chattanooga State, with third- place finishes in 2014 and 2015. She previously went once as an assistant coach at Gulf Coast State.
The Lady Tigers are 42-8 and seeded 11th in the 16-team field, with a scheduled opener at 9:30 p.m. EDT Wednesday against sixth seed Temple College (46-9) of Texas.
Golden, who’s 322- 88 at Chattanooga State, said February victories over WallaceDothan and Chipola, which are in this week’s field, inspire confidence in her largely freshman group, but even more uplifting was the Lady Tigers’ quick-strike approach in the 2019 TCCAA/ Region VII tournament at Columbia State. They scored in the first inning in each of their four games and led 9- 0 after three innings, 4-0 after four, 8-1 after three and 10-1 after three.
“Every single game we just came out with an energy we didn’t show all season,” said Haley Smith, the freshman third baseman — and occasional catcher and outfielder — from Girls Preparatory School who leads the Lady Tigers with a .451 batting average and a .753 slugging percentage.
They either had a nice lead “before we threw the first pitch,” Smith added, or played shutdown defense and then came in and immediately jumped ahead — a nice luxury for TCCAA pitcher of the year Brooke Parrott. The freshman from Central High threw shutouts in the first two games and got the starts and wins in the other two as well, with relief from Dayton’s Abby Wall.
The regular-season and tournament champions scored six runs in their first at- bat in the regional. That followed a 12-day “layoff” filled with rigorous practices and conditioning.
“We told them that the season was starting over and we had to be prepared,” said Golden, who admitted to “feeling pressure as a coach” not to allow a repeat of the 2018 region disappointment. “We challenged them, and they responded very well.”
The team batting average is .336, the scoring average seven runs a game. Holland is batting .399 with a .738 slugging percentage, team highs of 13 home runs and 60 RBIs. Smith has nine homers and 55 RBIs, while another freshman, shortstop Breanna Vinson from Jasper, is hitting .381 with 22 walks and 25 stolen bases.
Sophomores Shelby Penning, Madison Crabtree and Katie Cheeseman are batting .354, .327 and .324, and Lauren Hamby’s and Madison Tidmore’s averages are .298 and .272.
The all- freshman pitching staff has Parrott at 19-2 with two saves, a 2.30 earned run average and 176 strikeouts in 149 2/3 innings, Rilee King at 9-1 and 3.68, Wall at 7-2 and 2.37 and Lindsay Modar at 4-3 and 4.12