Jason Rollinson
Sports
May 16, 2008 12:53 am
—
Huntsville second baseman Michelle McGill has been playing softball since she was 4 and has made a habit of always keeping her ears peeled while she’s at the plate or in the field.
Her father, Greg, was an All-Southland Conference second baseman for Sam Houston State in 1989 and blasted the game-winning home run to win the SLC title which sent the Bearkats to the NCAA regionals.
“I really look up to him. He’s one of my heroes,” the 15-year-old sophomore McGill said. “He gives me advice and coaches me. When he’s in the stands, I can always hear his voice. If I foul off a pitch, he’ll tell me if I’m under it. All of those things really help when you’re out on the field.”
Her father wasn’t sure which path she’d choose, but was delighted with her decision to follow after him.
“With girls, you never know if they’re going to want to play with dolls or softball,” he said. “She was always chasing softballs. She would wait for me to come home from work with her glove in hand. I’m glad that I can pass on a lot of the philosophies learned from my baseball days on to her.”
The situation is not uncommon as Lady Hornets coach Nancy Hopper has witnessed several times where a player who comes from a good athletic background excels.
“I think when some of these student-athletes have parents who were really exceptional student-athletes when they were younger, it’s easy to see that it's in the genes,” Hopper said. “Once you have the natural ability, it’s just coming up with the mental drive to continue to keep working and get better.”
Hopper said she is not surprised how well her silent leader has responded to the position.
“Michelle’s pretty quiet, but according to her friends, she’s not like that all the time,” she said.
In her first season on varsity, McGill has already experienced the thrill of making the playoffs as the Lady Hornets are one of the final 16 Class 4A teams in the state.
“I watched her last year (on the junior varsity) and knew then that she was going to make an exceptional player,” Hopper said. “She was just one of those kids that we had to get up here, and she hasn’t let us down.”
McGill is one of several players who have Huntsville playing in the fourth round, just four weeks after barely getting into the playoffs with a win in the third-place tiebreaker over Willis.
The Lady Hornets hope to keep the magical run going when they open up their best-of-three Class 4A regional semifinal series with Nederland (25-8-1) tonight in game one at 7:30 at Pearland’s Dawson High School.
The series winner would earn a spot in the regional finals next week against Montgomery or Barbers Hill with a berth in the state tournament on the line.
“We’re very excited,” McGill said. “I think we can go all the way to state. This game is a really big deal. We just have to hit the ball. I’ve heard all of these stories about their pitcher (Caitlin Austin) having a good screwball. We just have to see the ball and it and we’ll be OK.”
Austin relies on the screwball, which breaks from left to right from the pitcher’s point of view (low and inside on a right-handed batter) and has the opposite movement of a slider.
The senior Austin has a record of 18-5 in the circle and an earned run average of 0.44. She has surrendered just 68 hits in 174 innings pitched while striking out 255 batters. In the playoffs for the Lady Bulldogs, she has surrendered just one run while striking out 57 and carries a 36-inning scoreless streak into tonight.
Offensively, Nederland’s led by junior shortstop Ashliegh Kuhn, who boasts a .364 batting average and has driven in 28 runs.
Huntsville (18-15) will counter with a streaking pitcher of its own.
Sophomore Shelby Smith has not allowed a baserunner to score since an unearned run came across in the first inning of game one against Waltrip as she has pitched 27 straight scoreless frames.
Smith kept the state’s second-ranked team, Brenham, at bay last week in the 2-0 single-game playoff win at Bearkat Softball Stadium and held their potent lineup to just four hits and even retired nine straight batters at one point in the game.
Nederland won the District 22-4A title and survived the area round after dropping game one to Brazosport. The Lady Bulldogs knocked off No. 6 Richmond Foster in a pair of shutouts to advance to the fourth round for the first time in 10 years.
“Nederland is a tough team with a lot of upper-classmen,” Hopper said. “Their girls are very athletic and they’ve been getting some good pitching. I believe that the three games that we played against Waltrip will help us here.”
Nederland’s coach, Sissy Yeaman, has a lot of respect for the Lady Hornets after learning of their upset over Brenham.
“They are talented and are peaking at just the right time,” Yeaman told The Port Arthur News. “We have to forget about their record and forget about where they finished in district. They are a very good team and we know this is going to be a tough matchup. Anytime you get this far in the playoffs, you are a good team.”
Hopper said her team is prepared for the matchup despite the bad weather they’ve received the last two days.
“We really had a good week of practice,” Hopper said. “We didn’t get what we thought we needed to do because the infield was so wet. We just made do with parts of the infield and got quite a bit done. Defensively, we feel good about our game. We’ve been hitting pretty well. We’ve looked at what this pitcher can throw at us, and we feel like we can attack it. We’re ready to go give it our best shot.”
She said that she hasn’t seen the excitement since her 2006 team reached the Class 5A regional finals.
“The girls are really pumped,” Hopper said. “I tell the coaches that it’s hard to read them sometimes. As young as they are, they're so focused. To me, that’s awesome.”
It’s no secret around the clubhouse as history is in the making at HHS.
“A couple of the girls mentioned that we’re only two rounds away from state,” Hopper said. “We want that to be our ultimate goal but don’t want to talk about that. We’ve got to take it one game at a time. Right now, the Nederland series is what we’re concerned with.”
Game two returns to the brand-new field in Pearland on Saturday at 5 p.m. with the third to follow if necessary.
Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.