Lady Scots during a game in their 2014 season, photo from athletics.covenant.edu
Nineteen. Yeah, nineteen. That’s why you should find yourself at a lot of softball games this year. Well, it’s one of the reasons. These girls work all year long to reap the rewards a few months out of the year and to represent Covenant well. Softball is like baseball without the things people complain about in baseball. Game too slow? Softball hears you! That’s why they shrunk the field so the action takes place a lot more quickly. Now don’t get me wrong, I love to watch Garrett Kriston, Micah Mabe, and Alec Mitchell fan batters as much as the next guy, but some folks take issue with the lack of balls put into play in an average baseball game. No worries, folks, softball feels you! That’s why they’ve got a larger ball that keeps the ball in play and you on the edge of your seat. Softball! It’s the game of the people!
Alright, so it’s a cool game and it fills the voids where baseball misses. Why else should we be braving the cold to watch the Scots play some softball? Our ladies have game. I wanted to save my explanation of “nineteen” for the end, but I can’t contain it anymore. The Lady Scots have scored nineteen runs in their first two games. Nineteen. I asked a Physics major and he said that’s like more than eight a game. These girls are hitting .367 on the year as a team. That’s absurd. They’re getting on base nearly 47% of the time! Expert source, Kaitlyn Sirmons, said that’s almost half the time. How much fun would a game be if you were getting on base almost half the time you come up to bat? Exactly. That’s why you should find yourself at a lot of softball games this year. These girls are raking and having a blast doing it.
So softball is great and the Scots are great at it as a team. Still not sold? Well the team rolls out some great individual talent, too. The Scots are returning two players who received postseason honors last year in Morgan Lane and Jordan Brett who are already back on similar paths again this year. Morgan is batting .500 and already has a pair of RBIs. Remember what we talked about earlier about getting on base half the time you come up to bat? Yeah, just ask her about it if you see her around. In addition, junior Madison Quirk has come flying out of the gates this year in her third season as a Scot. She couldn’t have gotten off to a better start. No, literally, it’s mathematically impossible for her to have started any better. She’s had five at bats and she’s gotten five hits (two of which were doubles), scored four runs, and tallied four RBIs. On top of that, the Scots have six freshmen on this year’s team and they are making a big impact early. One of these is Cris Grant, a freshman hailing from Gardendale, Ala. who is doing big things for the Scots so far. Grant has thrown only eight innings so far but has fanned fourteen batters. Now, if you haven’t been in the stands and felt the joy of a home-team strike-out, then this is urgent. You may need to find a local high school game instead of waiting for the Scots to come back into town. The feeling that comes with watching someone try to hit a pitch and missing the ball not once, not twice, but three times just pulls on your heart strings in an unexplainable way.
The late, great Nelson Mandela said, “Sport has the power to inspire. It has the power to unite people in a way that little else does. It speaks to the youth in a language they understand.” So get yourself out to a softball game the next time the Scots are in town because they’re good at what they do, they worked hard to be as good as they are at what they do, and because it’s Mandela-approved.