Arizona softball returns with new ambition

BY NATHANIAL STENCHEVER @nate_s8

After a promising 2022 season, the Arizona softball team was knocked out of the Women’s College World Series by the University of Texas at Austin early last summer. Now the Wildcats are back in action, ready to get the season started and aim for another run to the Women’s College World Series.

Arizona softball player Allie Skaggs said the team’s downfall last season was, in part, because of a collective lack of ambition and competitiveness.

“Last year got a little frustrating halfway through. It didn’t feel like we were competing and it didn’t feel like we wanted to win as badly as I hoped we would,” Skaggs said.

The Wildcats were given a preseason ranking of No. 14 in the country by Softball America and No. 15 by ESPN/USA Softball, making them the second and third-highest ranked Pac-12 team, respectively. Six out of the 12 teams in the Pac-12 have a top-25 preseason ranking this year.

Arizona softball will start their season at home during the Candrea Classic, which runs Feb. 9-12. The teams competing this year will be Arizona, California State University Long Beach, the University of Kansas and North Carolina State University.

After the Classic, the Wildcats will go on a 10-game, twotournament road trip. Four of the teams they will face also ranked in the top 25 in the preseason polls.

“We tend to load pretty early in the spring, so we tend to play some really good teams early on. Opening up with top-25 teams right off the bat will be huge and great for getting some experience,” Skaggs said.

This new season brings a new Arizona team dynamic full of competitive players.

“You’re gonna see girls making doubles out of a ball they barely hit into the outfield. It’s those

O’Tremba (Round 15, Pick 466) and Mac Bingham (undrafted). The team lost first-baseman Noah Turley to Oklahoma State University as well.

The Wildcats will also be taking a bit of a hit on the mound. Javyn Pimental and Chandler Murphy are transferring to the University of Missouri, the pros took Garrett Irvin and eligibility took Holden Christian, Quinn Flanagan, George Arias Jr. and Jonathan Guardado.

Luckily, Arizona signed nine new pitchers to the 2023 class, with three of them being lefthanded. This will be the first glance at the recruiting skills of Chip Hale. When Hale took control of his old stomping grounds on July 5, 2021, he was not able to make any additions to the roster.

Hale has been doing quite a bit of local recruiting. With two players signed from Pima Community College and six more players from high schools and community colleges in Southern Arizona, it seems Hale has a strategy when it comes to the 2023 signing class.

“It’s just not that we’re recruiting [in] the Tucson area, Southern Arizona, Phoenix, the whole state of Arizona [alone], but we have really good baseball in Arizona,” Hale said. “Did we get all of them? No. And that just shows how good our state is [at] producing baseball players.” types of players that will speed the game up so fast and if teams aren’t ready to pick up the pace with us, we’re gonna run all day and I think that’s really cool,” Skaggs said.

After playing eight major league seasons between two clubs, managing the Arizona Diamondbacks and winning a World Series with the Washington Nationals in 2019, Hale is more than qualified to take the Wildcats all the way.

Skaggs also talked about needing to do better in the Pac-12, as the team was not as dominant as players wanted it to be last year.

The first Pac-12 game will take place on rival turf in Tempe against a preseason-ranked ASU team on March 10.

Then, after facing Stanford University on the road, the Wildcats will face a No. 4 preseason ranked UCLA team at home on April 14. UCLA is the highest-ranked Pac-12 team during the preseason polls.

The Wildcats will finish their season at home against the University of California Berkeley after three games from May 5-7.

The Wildcats then host the firstever Pac-12 Softball Tournament starting on May 10 at Mike Candrea Field at Rita Hillenbrand

Memorial Stadium in Tucson.

“There’s no better place to host. Rita is a beautiful place and having all the teams here will be awesome, especially for us being here we are going to have that little extra edge of having the home-field advantage, which will be great,” Skaggs said.

Looking for another postseason berth, Skaggs talked about being fortunate to play in such a competitive conference with so much talent.

“I think just playing a couple more games against the [Pac-12] in the tournament will get us ready for the postseason.”

With the 2023 season approaching quickly and the thrill of hosting the first-ever Pac-12 tournament, there’s a lot to look forward to in this upcoming Arizona softball season.