UCF earns top AAC awards
Knights head to conference tournament focused on title
The UCF softball team heads to the American Athletic Conference tournament as the No. 1 seed for the first time in 7 years after clinching the program’s first regular-season title since 2015 this past weekend.
The Knights picked up a handful of top conference awards while earning multiple all-conference selections as voted on by the league’s seven head coaches prior to the start of the tournament.
Infielder Justene Molina won the program’s first AAC Defensive Player of the Year honor while teammate Micaela Macario was named the unanimous conference Rookie of the Year.
UCF’s coaching staff, which is led by Cindy Ball-Malone, was named the unanimous AAC Coaching Staff of the Year.
Additionally, a number of Knights earned first-team all-conference honors: Molina, catcher Jada Cody, pitcher Kennedy Searcy (unanimous), pitcher Gianna Mancha, infielder Kennedy Searcy (unanimous) and outfielder Denali Schappacher.
Three more Knights were picked secondteam all-conference: Macario, pitcher Kama Woodall and infielder Ashleigh Griffin.
Macario and Griffin earned spots on the conference’s All-Rookie squad as well.
The Knights (44-12, 16-2 AAC) enter the conference tournament ranked No. 17 in the country by three major polls — ESPN, D1Softball.com and Softball America — and No. 21 by USA Today.
UCF will face the winner of No. 4 Houston and No. 5 Tulsa, who play Thursday morning, in the semifinals Friday at noon on the campus of East Carolina in Greenville, N.C.
UCF had success against both potential opponents this season despite the Cougars (26-26-1, 8-9-1 AAC) handing the Knights their first conference loss 9-8 on April 24 in Houston.
The Knights, however, still won the first two games of the three-game series that weekend.
Meanwhile, UCF swept the Golden Hurricane the following week after holding Tulsa scoreless in two of the three games.
Regardless of whom UCF faces in the semifinals, the Knights are looking to avenge their loss to Wichita State in last year’s AAC championship.
The Shockers won 7-4 to earn an automatic bid for the NCAA tournament while the Knights had to wait to hear their names called during the NCAA selection show. The Knights were sent to the Tallahassee Regional and reached the regional title game but lost to FSU, which eventually got to the College World Series.
Ball-Malone believes last year’s championship loss as well as the 2020 season, which was shortened due to the COVID19 pandemic after the Knights started 21-5-1 overall, helped this year’s team reach this point as the league’s 1-seed.
“We’ve built up to it,” BallMalone said in a release. “Even though this team won it, I truly think this started with Team 19 in that 2020 season, just getting things turned around and really making it a goal and talking about it and working toward it.
“It’s been that same vision that we’ve carried on with some of these leaders that’s been on past teams,” she added. “But again, we’re back to where we need to be and where the program was, and we’re not done yet.”