Guest Post: Looking Back at the Harrisonburg Regional

While we’ve been forced to follow JMU softball’s postseason run from the comforts of our own homes, Chase Kiddy (@ckiddysports) has been able to attend in person. He offered to share his thoughts on last weekend’s events. Take it away Chase. 

Well, that was… expected?

JMU softball hosted one of the 16 NCAA Regionals for the second straight year, and this time, there was no doubt about who the best team in Harrisonburg was.

Before we get too far into this, let’s give credit to the other teams that visited the Burg. For a sub-.500 team, Princeton looked like a pretty solid squad on Friday, hanging tough with Dukes ace Megan Good. North Carolina was just as scrappy, mounting a late comeback Friday night and beating out Longwood for the right to play JMU on Saturday. The Lancers were probably the most impressive, surviving a late affair Saturday evening with UNC (their elimination game went to extra innings) and even staring JMU down for the first half of Sunday’s title game. Longwood and their fans can certainly hold their heads high on the way back to Farmville.

But let’s not kid ourselves. For the most part, this was a quiet, forceful domination from JMU, who seemed locked in and determined not to squander another home opportunity in the postseason.

On second thought, they didn’t look determined not to squander anything; they looked like a team completely unrelated to last year’s squad. They looked like a team who was incapable of anything but winning in convincing fashion.

I’m going to skip past the first two games because, frankly, there’s not a ton to cover, other than how completely awesome it was to see two grand slams in two days. The UNC game was ended early because of the slaughter rule, and the only drama late in the Princeton game was whether or not that game would be ended because of the slaughter rule (Princeton took JMU the full 7 innings), so let’s talk Longwood.

I can’t say enough how impressed I am with the Lancers. A lot is made of their coach, Kathy Riley, and it’s pretty clear that she runs a tight program. Since moving to the Big South at the beginning of the 2013 season, Longwood has made the NCAA Regional round three times. On Sunday, her team was both energetic and acrobatic — I think I counted seven or eight hustle-to-the-foul-ball putouts, half of which were really impressive diving catches.

It must be tough being Sydney Gay, Longwood’s starting pitcher from Sunday. Through the first four innings of the game, she pitched beautifully. She did get some help from a bizarrely inconsistent strike zone — at one point, Jailyn Ford was called out for a called Strike 3 that might have brushed her ankles — but even still, she had pitched a gem through four frames.

The problem was that she was still just the second best pitcher in the game. If you’re late to the softball bandwagon and you haven’t watched Megan Good yet, you’re really missing out on someone who might end up as one of the all-time great JMU athletes. Her win today is her THIRTY-FIRST of the season, which feels like a fictional number. I feel pretty comfortable saying she’s the most impressive student-athlete I’ve watched at JMU over the last year, which is amazing to consider after the year JMU athletics has had. (Sorry, Vad.)

Like most great athletes, she has another gear that she can tap into, and after some uncharacteristic fielding errors from JMU’s infield in the bottom of the third, and then some further questionable officiating at the plate, I felt like you could see her body language change a little bit in the circle. “Relaxed and smiling” seemed to become “focused and irritated,” and that can be a pretty lethal combination in any sport if you can keep your composure. Well, she did. Her control was there, her pitch velocity seemed even faster, and she kept piling up strikeouts. She finished the day with 10 strikeouts and zero earned runs, up from her Friday total of six strikeouts and zero earned runs. So yeah, #Goodisgood. (Shoutout to Dylan Garner from the Richmond Times Dispatch for that hashtag.)

But let’s backtrack to that erroneous third inning, because I think it might be the most important moment of the entire weekend. JMU third baseman Morgan Tolle fielded a tough ball from Jessica Smith, but her throw to first was off the mark, and Smith advanced to second. Then, Longwood’s Justina Augustine reached on a second consecutive error — this one featured Augustine barrelling into Jailyn, who tried to field the bunt down the first baseline, but dropped the ball during the tag when the two players made contact. There were runners on the corners with no outs on the board.

No one had scored in the game yet, so it seemed like we may be in line for a pitchers’ duel. After the errors, JMU seemed likely to blink first. The demons of last year’s early exit were creeping out again, and an uncomfortable silence fell over what had been a lively sell-out crowd just a few minutes earlier.

But JMU didn’t crack. Augustine was caught stealing a couple pitches later. Smith scored on a sac fly to center field, but it was Longwood’s only run of the game.

Then, in the fifth, Jessica Mrozek blasted one into the new wooden bleachers in the outfield. In the sixth, Erica Field literally bounced the go-ahead run off the top of the right field wall and over the fence. And in the seventh, just as the sun was coming out over top of the press box, JMU piled on three more runs just for good measure.

When dominant teams suddenly face some adversity, I’m always curious to see how they react. This JMU team — well, they can play from behind, or they can run-rule you in the fifth. And they don’t seem to care whether or not ESPN is broadcasting it or not.

Which, by the way, they will be this upcoming week. Games are set for Friday and Saturday, and it’s safe to say we should all be prepared for daytime tailgates and intentionally obnoxious misspellings of the word “go.”

JMU and Harrisonburg provided an awesome crowd for the Regional round, so I can’t wait to find out what we can cook up (literally) for the Super Regional. Our community is four days away from the Tailgate Battle to end all Tailgates Battles and three games away from the Women’s College World Series.

Make me proud.