Summer is ending and fall is rolling around, which means that there are a couple of constants awaiting K-town: leaves falling, cooling weather, pumpkin-spice flavored everything, and the UBCO varsity softball bringing home trophies. That’s right, for the second year in a row, the softball team has had an impressive end to the season.
First, the team clutched silver in the Western Collegiate Softball Association (WCSA) championship and qualified for the Canadian Collegiate Softball Association (CCSA) tournament, the most important softball tournament at a National level in Canada. Secondly, in the CCSA Nationals, they won 4 games and lost two, which resulted in the Heat claiming the bronze medal.
Still, there is more nuance to the grandiose end of the season for our team, a team which once again sparked fear in batters and pitchers alike. After all, the last game of the season was a shutout. In other words, the Heat won against the Durham College Lords without allowing them a run.
This super-September has been the culmination of the sluggers’ season. They started the season with a red hot 4 game winning streak; after all, they are the Heat for a reason. In fact, throughout the whole season, they never once lost more than two games in a row. Their season record was a 20-9-5, which means 20 wins, 9 losses and 5 ties.
For the WCSA, the varsity softball team had quite the repertoire of standouts; all stars on a team of all stars. They had the Leadership Award Recipient (Kasey Wright), two 1st Team All-Stars (Madison Roeseler, 3rd Base, and Cassidy Kelow, Utility) and a 2nd Team All-Star and Top Pitcher of the Season (Mikhaela Muir). It was thus a prodigious effort by the award winning team at WCSA’s final tournament in Calgary on the first weekend of October.
The following weekend, Thanksgiving weekend, the Heat played a grueling 6 games in 3 days at the CCSA championship that took place in Windsor, Ontario. Out of the 6 games, 4 were wins, which means that it was a great display of softball. As already mentioned, the final game of the season took place on Sunday against Durham College, where the Heat scored 7 runs. As for the standouts of the tournament, our very own centerfielder and team batting average leader (with a .522, an average that eclipses MLB’s all time career leader Ty Cobb by .156), Kasey Wright was a CCSA National All-Star, as well as the WCSA top pitcher, Mikhaela Muir.
Credit must also be given to the rest of the team, because it can be argued that softball, like baseball, is the ultimate team sport. As good as you are at batting, you only get around 3-5 chances at it per game. And, even if you are a perfect pitcher, you will tie if your team does not score. Point is, defending and batting at softball are a test of the collective’s greatness. And, even with standouts, a win is impossible to achieve without the efforts of the whole team. Thus, all the members of our Heat Softball team deserve great praise for their prolific performance throughout the season. Not every team reaches nationals, let alone wins medals.
This marks the second year in a row where the softball team has qualified for and won medals at nationals. Last year they were champions, and this year they captured bronze. Either way, in their three years as an official team (though a couple seasons weren’t played because of a certain event that was responsible for the cancelation of in-person sports), Heat varsity softball has had quite an impressive run.
Special thanks to:
UBCO Softball Instagram Page (@ubcosoftball)
GoHeat website (goheat.ca)
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