Story: Dustin Kent - JCFloridan.com Photo: Kristie Cloud
The Chipola Lady Indians will begin their quest for a second straight state championship Saturday when they head to Pensacola to open play in the FCSAA Softball Tournament against Suncoast Conference runner-up State College of Florida.
The teams will face off at 2 p.m. and will play a second game Saturday win or lose, with a victory earning a matchup with the winner of Tallahassee vs. Hillsborough, and a defeat resulting in an elimination game against the loser.
Chipola comes in with a 32-20 record after having gone 10-12 and finished third in the Panhandle Conference, though two of the 32 victories came against the Manatees in a doubleheader sweep March 8 in Marianna.
It has been an up-and-down season for the Lady Indians, who have had win streaks of eight and nine games and losing streaks of four and five games, but Chipola associate head coach Jimmy Hendrix said Tuesday that, in the postseason, all that matters is getting hot at the right time.
"It's the same thing every year. You get to the state tournament and anything can happen," he said. "What I've been saying all year is that if (freshman pitcher Jessica Elliott) goes out and throws strikes and the defense plays behind her and we get a couple of timely hits, then we can win the state tournament and we can win the national tournament. We've got the talent to do that and we've been working on getting better with the mental side and our mental approach. But we like our chances."
The Lady Indians have reason to be confident, with their ace Elliott able to pitch virtually every game thanks to the tournament format, and with them possessing arguably the most dangerous hitter in the state and among the most dangerous in the country in sophomore Katie Harrison, who has hit 22 home runs and driven in 81 runs in 2014.
Elliott has won 19 games so far with a 1.73 Earned Run Average while leading the state with 214 strikeouts.
She has mostly pitched just the first game of doubleheaders this season, but Hendrix said that the Lady Indians are going to ride their ace in the postseason as far as she'll take them.
Fellow sophomore Rosanne de Vries, who is coming off one of her best outings of the season against Santa Fe over the weekend, has postseason experience and will be available if needed, as will freshman Luana Imamura.
Perhaps the most consistent Lady Indian of the season has been Harrison, who won the Panhandle Conference Player of the Year award after batting .520 with 14 home runs and 43 RBI in 22 league games, and is two home runs away from tying Monique Marier's state JUCO record for 37 career home runs and five away from tying Marier's single-season record of 27 homers.
Harrison has had a dominant season with a .444 average and a staggering .944 slugging percentage to go with her 22 home runs and 81 RBI, with freshman slugger Brashante Dareus tacking on 13 home runs of her own to form a pretty potent duo in the middle of the order.
"Katie is our best hitter, no question about it. She might be the best hitter we've ever had," Hendrix said. "To have a hitter like that in the lineup helps everyone, and Brashante feeds off of Katie and they feed off of each other. You can't just walk Katie because (Dareus) will come up and have a chance to hit a long ball too. What we've been working on is the bottom of the order getting some timely hits. That hasn't always been there this season, but we hope it will be there this weekend."
Most of the players hitting in the 6-through-9 spots in the order are freshmen, and there are nine freshmen in total who play roles in the lineup or in the circle for the Lady Indians and will be seeing their first state tournament action.
Hendrix said he has seen progress with the team's young players, but it's hard to know how any of them are going to react to the enormous pressure of the postseason.
"Hopefully we're ready, but I don't know if we ever really know if we're going to be ready," he said. "We've got quite a few freshmen. I think we've improved. Santa Fe jumped out on us by six runs in the second game (Saturday) and we came back to win it with three runs in the sixth and three in the seventh, and that's something that hasn't been there all year."
Sophomores Harrison, de Vries, Lindsay Wurm, and Alyssa Hathcoat all played for Chipola's 2013 state championship team and the Lady Indians have been a fixture at the state tournament for much of the last decade.
Hendrix said the advice to those players who making their first appearance in the playoffs is to not get too amped up or consumed by the moment.
"It's still a game, so don't add any pressure to it or make it bigger than it is," he said. "You're going to show up and play and when the game's over go back to the hotel. Being able to control your emotions during the game is what's going to win it or lose it, and that's the thing we've been working on. We're going to go out there and give all that we have and see what happens."