Creighton vs. No. 8 Missouri, 6:30 p.m., Columbia, Mo. [Media Menu]
Success certainly hasn’t been hard to come by for the Creighton softball team. The Jays will be making their sixth NCAA Tournament appearance in the last eight years and their seventh under coach Brent Vigness this weekend in Columbia, Mo. Just business as usual, one might imagine.
Or anything but.
“It has to be the most satisfying,” said Vigness when asked to rank this season with his previous successes.
There’s the old saying that every team is going to go though some adversity during the season. But what the Jays went through might qualify as extreme circumstances.
Creighton was the overwhelming favorite to win its fourth straight Missouri Valley Conference regular-season title. A three-time MVC Pitcher of the Year and a member of the preseason National Player of the Year watch list, senior Tara Oltman and her minuscule ERA were back in the circle, and reigning Valley Player of the Year Renae Sinkler was back for her senior season.
The Jays, as usual, played a tough non-conference schedule, but got off to a 9-4 start that included a win over No. 15 Northwestern. Then they lost 12 of their next 17 games, including five straight in conference play.
“We weren’t hitting very well,” said Vigness. “We had even more people moved around out of position than we currently have.”
Junior infielder and former leadoff hitter Liz McKewon was out with a stress fracture. And, perhaps most detrimental, all-World pitcher Tara Oltman threw every pitch not knowing if she’d still be in the circle for the next one.
Sometime in the middle of non-conference play, the NCAA sent a memo to its officials telling them to watch for illegal pitches – specifically, when a pitcher pushes off with her back foot twice, once off the rubber and once in front.
Oltman threw approximately 12,751 pitches over her first three years; about six of them were deemed illegal (an illegal pitch with a runner on base is a balk; there is no stat category for an illegal pitch with the bases empty)
On March 27 in a doubleheader at Southern Illinois, Oltman was called for four straight illegal pitches to start the bottom of the first inning in game one, and again had trouble with the call in game two. An illegal pitch results in a ball, and any runner gets to advance a base. She had to leave the game after only one batter in the first game and made it through only a third of an inning in game two, both losses for Creighton.
A week later, at home against Missouri State on April 2, Oltman worked a scoreless first inning. Apparently, though, something changed between innings, because she threw eight illegal pitches to start the second, balking in a run, and had to be removed. The Jays went on to lose.
“It was awful,” said Oltman. “It was at a horrible time in the season for it to happen. It was very frustrating.”
That’s a nice way to put it.
For three years, it wasn’t an issue. Then, all of a sudden, Oltman couldn’t get through a game. Yeah, that might be a little frustrating.
In five games against Southern Illinois and Missouri State, she pitched just 1.1 innings. She sat out the final two against MSU and a game against North Dakota State while she tried to revamp her pitching motion. It hasn’t been an issue since, her new motion combining with a loosened stance from the umpires, and it’s probably no coincidence that the Jays have completely turned it around since then.
Before April 5, Creighton was 14-16 batting .196 with a team ERA of 3.21. Since April 5, the Jays are 23-5, they’re hitting .290 and the ERA is 1.97. Everything culminated last Saturday with a win in the MVC Tournament championship over Southern Illinois.
“I think it starts with our six seniors,” said Vigness. “Any success that a team has, it starts with leadership. These six seniors all provide leadership in a different way. These six seniors want this season to continue, there’s no question about it.”
Sure, it starts with the six seniors, but an eye-opening speech from the coach doesn’t hurt, either.
“I remember telling them that it had to hurt,” began Vigness. He doesn’t recall exactly what game things began to turn around, but he remembers very vividly what he told his team that day.
“It had to bother them, especially the six seniors. I don’t think there’s been many times like that, that I’ve had to point that out. I think it’s okay to be upset; I think it’s okay to be disappointed; I think it’s okay for people to hurt when things don’t go the way they want them to go. I think a lot of times we tend to mask those feelings – we don’t want to feel that. But I wanted them to feel it. I wanted them to be disappointed and upset and hurt.
“There was only one or two ways to go: they were either going to go dig down deep and get tougher and find a way to get out of it, which this group did, or it could go the other way. Luckily for us, those six seniors led the way.”
Besides Oltman, one of the other seniors is Sinkler, who didn’t do much except win another MVC Player of the Year award and set the school and conference record for home runs in a season with 24. In addition to everything the team went through this year, she remembers being snubbed from the NCAA Tournament after losing in the Valley title game last year.
“It’s so satisfying because we get to come back as seniors and show how good of a team we really have,” said Sinkler. “It’s our last time to do it.”
Senior Michelle Koch hit .414 over the final 23 games of the season. Senior Sara Loeffelholz crushed a game-tying homer in the team’s eight-inning win over Wichita State in the first round of the Valley Tournament. Senior Michelle Graner made a highlight-reel catch against the fence for the last out of the title game. Senior Jessi Jadlowski made a couple diving catches in the outfield in the tournament.
The seniors just wanted it and, sitting in his office Wednesday, Vigness could not have been any prouder.
“It would have been really disappointing with this group and for these six seniors if we didn’t advance to the postseason,” said Vigness. “They’ve done so many positive things for our program. They’ve taken our program to new levels. For them not to experience Regionals and postseason play as seniors, it just wouldn’t have been the proper ending for this group.”
And make no mistake – just because they’ve made it to this point, the Jays haven’t accomplished their goals. A small poll makes that clear: What would be considered a success this weekend?
“Winning it,” said Oltman. “Winning it,” added Sinkler. “Nothing less.”