Softball team looks to build off second place finish in 2010 Region XVI Tournament
By: Spencer Gleason
-Sports Editor-
After finishing the 2010 regular season with a 17-42 record, the Magic softball team highlighted their year when they returned home with a second-place trophy from the Region XVI Tournament.
Looking to keep that momentum alive, head coach Kim McCall has recruited players across Missouri. McCall’s 12-woman roster is the youngest team of the five STLCC-Meramec sports, with 75 percent of her student-athletes in their first year.
“We took our successes that we had toward the end of the tournament and toward that last game,” McCall said. “And we built it into a team that has more talent, more aggressiveness and more hunger to get that regional title this year.”
Freshman pitcher Erin Riley will be at the top of the rotation.
While pitching for the Trojans of Trinity High School last season, Riley threw 11 complete games and struck out 53 batters in more than 76 innings pitched, helping lead the Trojans to a 12-10 record.
“Those are pretty normal numbers [for me],” Riley said. “College is tougher. I’ll shoot for my goal and we’ll hope I can reach it.”
Riley’s repertoire of pitches feature a curveball, change-up, screwball, rise ball, drop ball and a fastball that hits 52 mph on the radar gun.
“[Drop balls] start out up, so when it’s coming in it looks like a strike,” said slugger and Magic catcher, Ally Kubel. “Then all of a sudden it’ll drop and it tricks the batter. You have to keep the batter guessing.”
For the past two summers, Kubel has played for the St. Louis Illusions select team in the United States Specialty Sports Association (USSSA), traveling across the Midwest. In 2010, she batted .262 with seven extra-base hits for the Illusions.
In 2009, Kubel played for the St. Louis Metro Amateur Softball Association (ASA) 18-and-under championship team.
When standing in the batter’s box, the trick is to “watch the ball from the hip,” Kubel said. “It’s all about timing. It’s a lot more complicated than people think.”
On Feb. 26, when McCall’s Magic has their home opener against North Iowa Area Community College at 1 p.m., all the recruiting and practicing will begin to payoff.
As competitive as the sport of softball can be, Meramec’s history speaks for itself.
Since the days of National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) Hall of Famer Celeste Knierim, who started the softball program at Meramec, Meramec softball has never failed to place in the NJCAA Championship Tournament at least twice in each decade—back-to-back top-10 finishes in 1978 and 1979, three times in the 1980s, six times in the 1990s, and three times in the 2000s.
Moving toward the 2011 season, the Magic softball team is hoping to continue a winning tradition.
“I look at each piece of the puzzle to be magical piece to lead up to a magical season,” McCall said.
“There’s going to be some times when our spells aren’t going to work and our wizards aren’t going to perform the way we want them to, but each piece of the puzzle that we get; we want everything to work up and to the final piece of the puzzle to make it one complete picture.”
