Impressive Run Ends in Supers for UK Softball
The Kentucky softball team relished the underdog role until the very end.
First, the Wildcats raced through the Lexington Regional after many experts pegged UK to falter as the No. 16 seed. Then, when the Cats went west for super regionals, no one gave them much of a chance against No. 1 overall seed Oregon. At least until they hung nine runs on the Ducks in game one.
Oregon would reassert itself in games two and three, winning 6-1 on Friday and 11-1 on Saturday in Eugene, Oregon, to end the season for Kentucky (35-21). Their bats may have been silenced over that two-game stretch, but UK’s offensive improvement this season was clear.
“I feel really good about where we’re at,” Rachel Lawson said. “Last year at this time, our offense wasn’t putting up any runs. We weren’t doing a very good job with that and we made a team mission to get better with that. We had a dramatic improvement on the offensive side of things, and that’s what you saw when you saw us in regionals.”
UK scored 28 runs across three run-rule wins in its regional, serving as the signature moment of a dynamic offensive season. The Cats averaged 5.5 runs per game and batted .308 as a team, substantial improvements from last year’s 4.0 runs per game and .282 batting average.
That progress was no accident, as Lawson, her staff and her team made a commitment to lift UK’s offense to the high standard of its pitching and defense.
“We’re always a pitching and defensive school,” Lawson said. “I know it didn’t show tonight, but that’s mostly because of the youth and coming up against such an awesome Oregon offense. I feel good about the pitchers we have in our program and the pitchers we have coming into our program.”
In the circle, UK will return Grace Baalman and Autumn Humes, who each threw 100-plus innings this season. The only departures will be pitcher/first baseman Erin Rethlake, catcher Rachael Metzger and outfielder Brooklin Hinz, who had a home run in her final college game.
“While I’m disappointed that we didn’t win, I think there’s only a few schools in the country that can make it supers and we’ve made it to supers six times in the last 10 years,” Lawson said.
That run of success is unprecedented in Kentucky history, but it’s also not nearly enough for Lawson.
“I’m looking forward to instead of saying we’ve been in supers six of the last 10 years, I want to do something similar to Oregon where I can say we’ve been to the World Series that many times,” Lawson said.
