By Justin Zackal
Thomas More is the reigning PAC champion and host team for the 2018 conference tournament.
There’s definitely a window closing after this weekend’s PAC Softball Championship Tournament. The host and top seed is defending champion Thomas More (27-13, 17-1 PAC), a team that is leaving the PAC after the season. However, second-seeded Westminster (25-7, 16-2 PAC) is chock-full of talented seniors looking to win the league after finishing second last year and missing a chance two years ago despite hosting the tournament.
However, the Titans aren’t approaching the four-team, double-elimination tournament in Crestview Hills, Ky., under the pressure of thinking this is their best chance to win their first PAC title since 2005, or that there’s any type of “window” closing.
“The good thing about the seniors this year, they are playing with less pressure,” said Jan Reddinger, Westminster’s 22nd-year head coach. “It’s just, ‘Let’s have fun.’ And the underclassmen have set the tone for that because they have kept them loose.”
Loose, according to Reddinger, doesn’t mean Westminster won’t be focused. What the Titans have learned from losing at Thomas More twice in the PAC tournament last year (1-0 in the second round and 3-1 in the final game) is that you have to focus on innings, outs and even pitches, rather than winning the tournament.
“You can’t look at the big picture,” Reddinger said. “Our strategy is going to be winning an inning. You have to play every inning as if that matters because if you look too far ahead, that’s when the mistakes start happening. As close as all four teams are, the team that makes the least amount of mistakes is going to win it. Our focus has to be more specific.”
Jazmyn Rohrer is Westminster’s single-season strikeout queen and hoping to lead the Titans to a PAC title.
Westminster will open the tournament Friday at 10 a.m. against third-seeded Saint Vincent (21-8, 12-5 PAC), a team the Titans swept at home Sunday, 6-3 and 6-0. Thomas More will host fourth-seeded Bethany (17-16, 9-8 PAC) at noon. Thomas More swept Bethany, 7-2 and 5-2, at Bethany April 7.
“Thomas More plays good defense and they have good pitching, but they just hit the ball, one through nine, all the way through,” said Bethany head coach Jan Forsty. “They are a very good team.”
Thomas More’s No. 4-hitter in particular, sophomore first baseman Andrea Gahan, leads the PAC in runs (39), hits (62), RBI (46), home runs (15) and ranks second in batting at .473.
Even before her team locked up the fourth seed, Bethany coach Jan Forsty said that finishing above .500 in the PAC would be tough relying on one pitcher, senior Sam Binkley (11-11, 3.02 ERA), after losing senior Cassie Weiss (6-5, 2.44 ERA) to a season-ending knee injury.
There’s also a window closing for Bethany. Forsty, who led the Bison to a PAC-best 12 titles including six straight from 1999-2004 and their most recent one in 2011, will retire after this season.
Statistically, Saint Vincent is the best offensively, with its .360 team batting average and .417 on-base percentage, and any team can get hot and win it all, as the Bearcats did for their lone PAC title in 2016 as a three seed. However, starting pitchers can carry a team to a title, just as the tournament’s last two Most Outstanding Players did: Samantha Emert by winning four games for Saint Vincent in 2016 and Alix DeDreu by winning three games for Thomas More last year.
DeDreu (18-4, 2.40 ERA), a junior this year, is back after giving up 16 hits and just two runs in her last three games against Westminster, including two in last year’s tournament. Westminster will counter with senior Jazmyn Rohrer (18-3, 0.77 ERA), who surrendered two runs (one earned) on five hits in her one start vs. Thomas More this year, after pitching eight innings with 11 hits, three runs, one walk and 11 strikeouts vs. Thomas More in last year’s tournament.
“(Thomas More is) not going to give you a game,” Reddinger said. “Any one of these four teams can win it. It’s whichever team makes the least amount of mistakes.”
And if no team is giving a game away, then the winner, like stepping through an open window, must be the team that takes it.
