Softball team looks to capture PAC title

by Brian O'Connell sports editor

Coming off a win over Neumann College, the Lady Cavs captured first place in the Pennsylvania Athletic Conference. Now that the regular season is over, they can now focus on their mission: to win the Pennsylvania Athletic Conference title. The mission begins this Saturday, April 24th and concludes on Sunday, April 25th. The team will face the fourth place team, which will either be Beaver College or Wesley College. Both tied for the fourth place slot.

"We have been playing really well over the past couple of weeks," sophomore Meghan Merkel said.

"Since the beginning of the season we agreed that we would play our best and no one would give up," Merkel said.

What motivates the Lady Cavs for this year's playoffs is the memory of last year's away loss to Miersercordia in 10 innings in the playoffs.

''That game really sticks out in our minds," Merkel said.

"This year, though, it is a whole new game, and that is how we are going to approach the game."

The playoffs consist of a double-elimination tournament. The one thing the players would love to have is a lot of fan support from the students and anyone who enjoys watching softball.

"We would love to see a lot of fans there to support us," Merkel said.

"Normally, our fans consist of our family, friends, and strong supporters of the softball program."

This is not as much support as we would like to have because we have such a great team this year."

Another reason for the low nuber of fans is that we do not have a field on campus," said Merkel.

If we had a field on campus, we are alost certain the fan support would be there, so we want to see a lot of students at the games this weekend, because we know we can win."

The team is focusing on winning the first game for now. However, if they are to face Miersercordia in the first round, they believe they have the advantage because they had just recently defeated them in 12 innings.

"We are confident that we have the edge on Miersercordia because we just beat them last Thursday by a final score of 3-2 in 12 innings," Merkel said.

However, there is one concern for the team. The roster started the season with 11 players.

Due to the injury of freshman Lisa Jackson with a broken hand, the lady Cavs are now down to 10 players on their roster.

"We have 10 players on the team right now who can play and the game requires nine players to play the game to start out," said Merkel.

Now this limits us to one substitue for both games, but we will try not to let that bother us too much."

"Our main focus is to bring home the PAC charnionship," Merkel said.