As the Terrapin softball team began the season steamrolling its early nonconference opponents, along the way clinching a school-record 16-game winning streak, coach Laura Watten cautioned her team against becoming too excited or confident as ACC games approached.
It’s not how you start, but how you finish, she warned.
It turns out Watten was right. After beginning the season 22-4, also a program record, the Terps went 14-19 the rest of the way, including 7-14 against the ACC. Their season highlight came possibly in their first game – a 2-0 win over then-No. 12 Michigan.
About a month later, the Terps found themselves ranked in the top 25, and a week later, they were the ACC’s highest-ranked team.
“It felt really good because it was the first time that Maryland softball had ever started off [so well]. And just to have a record like that, it was something to be pretty proud of,” senior right fielder Jenny Belak said. “We wanted to just keep building off it, which we did to a certain extent, but obviously not as much as we wanted to.”
Injuries, coupled with the beginning of their conference schedule – which was as difficult as possible – doomed the Terps.
For their first three conference opponents, the Terps drew the ACC’s top three teams – North Carolina, Virginia Tech and Florida State – in succession.
The Terps went 0-3 against the Tar Heels, 1-2 against the Hokies and 2-1 against the Seminoles. As seniors Sarde Stewart and Meghan Booth battled injuries for a couple of weeks, the Terps made incremental improvements that had them feeling good about the remainder of the season.
“We were regenerating the confidence we had lost [because of injuries],” Watten said. “I felt like we actually were rebounding OK through it and learning from it. I felt like we were in a really strong place when we played Florida State. We felt pretty strong again.”
But the Terps received bad news the following Tuesday.
An MRI of junior pitcher Meredith Nelles’ back revealed she had suffered gradual nerve damage, and doctors told Nelles that to protect against additional damage, she would need to end her career.
“The doctor said she basically shouldn’t have been playing anymore,” Watten said. “Playing ball and putting more fatigue on her back was only going to do more nerve damage, and it wasn’t going to get any better. I think everybody was in shock.”
Watten admits at first she didn’t realize the physical effect Nelles’ loss would have on her team.
Coupled with the loss of freshman pitcher Kerry Hickey, who was suffering from nagging back problems that prevented her from pitching, the Terps were without their only two rise-ball pitchers, hampering a staff whose strength had been its depth and versatility.
“You’re left with [junior pitcher Sarah] Dooley as a down pitcher and [sophomore pitcher] Lindsey Wright, who throws mainly curveballs and changeups,” Watten said. “It cut out the meat of our pitching staff with the loss of Meredith and then Kerry.”
But as much as the injuries affected the Terps physically, it had an even bigger effect mentally, Watten said. Suddenly the four-woman pitching staff was cut to two, putting more pressure on Dooley and Wright to shut ACC offenses down and on the lineup to produce more runs.
“We still tried to keep a positive attitude. We never went in there with a bad attitude or a bad aura or anything like that,” Hickey said. Things just started not going our way. I guess it was a streak of bad luck.”
The result wasn’t pretty.
After going 3-6 against the ACC’s top-three teams, the Terps went 4-8 against the rest of the conference and finished seventh. All hopes of a postseason berth, barring an ACC tournament championship, were gone. But even those dreams ended after the Terps lost their first two tournament games.
“My absolute goals for every year are to be in the top 20 and to be a national contender,” Watten said. “The reason I came here was to be a contender and hopefully host regional play. We’ve got great facilities and a great school to attract top [talent] to College Park.”
Despite the disappointing ending to the season and an early exit from the ACC tournament, Watten and her team still have some highlights to look back on.
“In the third year I was up here, I didn’t want to wait around to put a team on the map – I wanted to do it immediately,” Watten said. “We’ve had some players break a lot of records, (but) I think the biggest accomplishment so far has been the top 20, breaking that seal, turning some heads and establishing this program as a contender.”
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