Postseason play begins this week for the Hillsdale College softball team, who hopes to repeat the success it had last year.
The defending conference tournament champions are back in the playoffs and begin G-MAC Tournament play at 10 a.m. Thursday against Ohio Dominican at Akron's Firestone Stadium. Hillsdale enters the conference tournament as the No. 8 seed, and will take on the regular season champion Panthers.
This is, as usual, a double-elimination tournament, with teams needing to lose twice before exiting the tournament.
Other first-round matchups include No. 2 Trevecca Nazarene vs. No. 7 Findlay, No. 3 Tiffin vs. No. 6 Malone and No. 4 Cedarville vs. No. 5 Kentucky Wesleyan. With the exception of two first-round games at Walsh, all games will be played at Akron's Firestone Stadium.
Hillsdale brings one of the deepest and most potent hitting lineups of anyone in the G-MAC into this week's tournament. Twelve players are batting .300 or better, and five of the top 12 hitters in G-MAC competition come from the Charger lineup - Amanda Marra, Jessica Taylor, Victoria Addis, Katie Kish and Sam Catron. This Charger team doesn't necessarily hit a lot of home runs - its 11 rank 11th in the league - but it has an overall batting average of .318 and is batting .367 in G-MAC contests. There isn't an easy out in this order.
There's plenty of speed coahc Kyle Gross can deploy on the basepaths as well. Players like Carlin MacDonald-Gannon, Morgan Cox and Elaine Townley are fast and intelligent baserunners and give Gross flexibility that can be hugely important in late-game, one-run situations.
The pitching staff features depth and versatility, two key ingredients in making a deep tournament run. Junior Dana Weidinger is pitching her best softball in recent weeks, and recorded two complete-game shutouts in the regular season's final two weeks. Sophomore Natalie Walters leads the Chargers with nine victories this season while freshman Camryn Olson was turned in a number of very effective outings, showing a consistent ability to get batters out in a wide variety of ways. Fellow freshman Julia Sayles has also had some nice moments and carries a proven ability to pitch well in late, tight situations.
An automatic bid to the NCAA Division II regional tournament awaits the conference tournament champion. In 2018, Hillsdale earned its second-ever berth in the regional, and made that appearance count in a 1-0 first-round win over No. 1-seed Grand Valley State.
All G-MAC Tournament games will be broadcast on the Great Midwest Digital Network.