Report from the Spring Break Classic in Clearwater, Florida
By Mark Allister
Southern hospitality is legendary, but this past weekend the University of South Florida, host for the Clearwater Spring Break Classic, treated badly the visitors they played. The Bulls went 5-0 on the weekend, shutting out four of the teams and run-ruling three. The cake’s icing came in their final game when Georgina Corrick no-hit a good University of North Florida team. After a mid-week date against regional rival University of Florida, USF will open league play in the American Athletic Conference on Friday. North Florida, whose only loss was the one to the Bulls, opens ASUN play on Saturday.
The women’s college softball season can be divided into two parts: early weeks of tournament play, followed by league games. (Teams who qualify for the post-season then have a third stretch of games.) Mid-March is the transition time for the DI calendar. Schools whose leagues have numerous members and warm weather — the SEC, for example —began league play the weekend of March 9-11 this year. The Big South and the Pac-12, with good weather and fewer teams, opened this past weekend, followed by the rest of the southern leagues this Friday. But northern conferences have to wait until the end of March, when the cold and the snow have exited the region — the teams hope — and their fields become playable. Most of the teams in the Spring Break Classic were northern teams trying to get conference-ready. They have played far fewer games than teams that don’t have to expend budget or time on travel. When Princeton played USF, for example, it was Princeton’s eleventh game of the season and USF’s thirty-third.
It’s not only the smaller number of games that put the northern teams at a disadvantage. They practice indoors through the winter. For their first southern tournament, usually in February, the infielders are seeing grounders on dirt for the first time in months, and the outfielders are getting used to not only sun and wind, but regular fly balls, given that the facilities rarely aren’t big enough for a normal-sized field. But the northern teams were happy to be in Clearwater, not just to play the game they love, but to play it outdoors, in the sun, while hearing reports from back home of blizzards and nor’easters.
One northern team looking ready for conference play is the University of Maine, who went 3-1 on the weekend, including a big win against ASUN member Florida Gulf Coast University, who at that point was 22-4 with a nine-game win streak. Maine is not picked to win the America East Conference — Binghamton is — but the Black Bears look ready to contend. Quinnipiac University, who plays in the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, went 3-2. They got three wins in the circle from senior Casey Herzog, who gave up only one run, and outfielder Erin Larsen went 8-14 on the weekend, with seven RBI. Quinnipiac got run-ruled in their two losses, and so they’re looking for a solid No. 2 starter and consistency from the team as a whole. Perhaps the most impressive northern team at the Spring Break Classic was Long Island University-Brooklyn, who won four games. Their next game will be their opener in the Northeast Conference. For all these northern teams, when they begin conference play against opponents who face similar weather-related issues, the playing field will at least be level, and (we hope) free of snow.
Mark Allister teaches literature at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. He is currently writing a book, Turn and Look: Women’s College Softball Is Crushing It.
