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After watching the Washington Huskie’s win the Woman’s 2009 NCAA Softball Championship, I figure this is a good a time as any to recap the Maryland Woman’s Softball team, which wasn’t quite as successful.  Though the Huskie victory was in itself quite an accomplishment, it was nothing like the game Florida won to advance to the Championship round.  They beat Alabama via a grandslam with 2 outs and while down 3 runs in the bottom of the 7th.  I mean if that isn’t the ultimate backyard moment, I don’t know what it is.  I think we have all tossed a ball up in the air with just that scenario in our minds, but to see it happen in such a huge game was impressive.

But moving on to the Maryland Softball team.   The Lady Terps finished the year 29-26 with a 9-11 ACC record.   They lost in the first round of the ACC Tournament to Virginia Tech.  However, we won’t harp on that.  It’s time to give out some Dropsies.

The first dropsie is for the Teams Most Outstanding Offensive Player, at least from our prospective.  Though this award was a lot harder to decide upon than I thought, a decision was made, and without further delay (that is designed to build suspense), the Offensive MVP Dropsie goes to Breanna Shaw!  (Wait for applause to die down) Breanna comes to Maryland via Ellenwood Georgia.  She hit .326 this season with 9 doubles and 18 RBI’s.    She was also second on the team with a .459 slugging percentage.

That covers the offensive side, but what about pitching?  Well the most interesting thing about softball, that those who don’t follow the sport may not know, is that there are not many softball pitchers.  In fact a lot of teams have one pitcher who just pitches just about the whole time.  I remember learing somewhere, probably at the Dr.’s office, that the human arm is not designed to throw overhand.  Everytime you raise your hand above your shoulder, you are putting stress on your shoulder, but pitching underhand works with the way our bodies were designed.  That is why you can pitch for…apparently forever…when pitching underhand.  It works for the Terps whose pitching staff consists of three players.  So if you took the mound for the lady Terps that automatically gives you a 1 in 3 shot at an award.

But to narrow it down, the 2009 Softball Pitching Dropsie goes to Sarah Dooley.  Sarah comes from St. Louis and is a big Cardinals fan per UMTerps.com.  She also lists St. Patrick’s Day as her favorite holiday which would probably make sense for someone with a last name of Dooley.  (Mine would be Christmas…hertiage be damned, I want presents!!).  Anyway Sarah went 16-10 for the Terps and posted an ERA of 2.76.  She pitched 4 shutouts and 10 complete games.  Opponents batted .216 against her.  So congratulations to you Sarah, you can hang your award next to your Albert Puljos Poster (which I’ll assume you have).

And that brings us to our last award for the night.  This goes to the Terp with the slickest glove.  It is one thing to hit, and one thing to pitch, but fielding is just as important.  You can see a HR in the box score, and you can see K’s but it isn’t always as easy to see who did what with their glove.  But that is what we are here for.  This award goes to…Nadine Blackie.  Nadine comes to Maryland via Delta British Columbia (which means in Canada when they show her stats on TV they put a Maple Leaf next to her name).  And with Nadine being from Canada, that brings two questions to mind.  First does anyone within 500 miles of campus play softball, and two, exactly how much money do we budget to softball recruiting?

Anyway, back to Nadine.  She had a .987 fielding percentage and 312 put outs.  She also lists Steve Nash as her favorite athlete (those Canadians stick together). 

So there you have it.  To recap the 2009 Softball Dropsies:

Offenisve MVP- Breanna Shaw

Pitching MVP- Sarah Dooley

Gold Glove- Nadine Blackie

Congratulations to the Ladies on their prestigous awards, and I look forward to watching them in the NCAA Tournament next year on ESPN….RIGHT!!

Extra Droppings:

While watching the womans softball game on ESPN, the Bottomline kept showing that the NHL owners turned down a proposition to ban hits to the head.  Which makes me wonder, how exactly did that conversation go down? 

Owner 1: Hey guys, hits to the head are bad, we should ban them.

Owner 2:  Uhhh…yeah…I don’t think so, lets keep hits to the head.

All Other Owner (in Unison):  Agreed!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 at 4:58 pm and is filed under Other Maryland Terps Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.