Softball hopes to reach A-10 playoffs this year

Last year’s Temple Owls failed to make the playoffs after finishing with a 15-25 overall record, including 6-8 in the Atlantic Ten Conference.

After missing the Atlantic Ten Conference Tournament by one game last year, the softball team and second-year coach Joe DiPietro have one goal in mind this season.

“We’re gonna win A-10’s this year,” said Danielle Fagan, a senior shortstop and one of three captains on the team. She added that the A-10 preseason poll “doesn’t mean anything.”

Temple was picked to finish in sixth place after ending the 2009 season with a 15-25 overall record, including 6-8 in the A-10.

During the offseason, the Owls have been continuously training in an effort to ensure the upcoming season ends in a more successful outcome. The Owls recorded a winning record (5-3) in the fall season and claimed the Pool A Championship in the final tournament at the Pride College Showcase in Newark, N.J.

“We haven’t forgotten about last year,” senior catcher and captain Krystle Metzler said. “We use it every single day as motivation.”

Metzler started all 40 games last season and finished with a .996 fielding percentage. She threw out 12 runners attempting to steal bases.

“We’ve been practicing a lot, putting a lot of time in the weight room,” she said.

The team returns two experienced pitchers in junior Amanda Branco and sophomore Lauren Spoo.
Junior Kristen Marris, a first-year transfer from Midland College, Texas, is projected to be a big part of the team’s rotation and has pitching speed in the upper 60s, DiPietro said. Marris was a 2009 National Fastpitch Coaches Association (NFCA) National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) Division I All-American Second Team and All-West Region First Team selection.

Another highly regarded new pitcher is freshman Crystal Nyman. DiPietro said she can also throw in the low 60s.

“Our pitching situation is vastly improved,” DiPietro said. “I think adding those two really upgraded our pitching staff.”

Additional newcomers include freshman Ali Robinson, who is expected to start in center field; freshman Kayla Cook, who will back up the catcher and third base positions; and sophomore outfielder and shortstop Christina Sykora, who batted .179 with four doubles and two home runs last year.

“We’re concentrating on team more than anything,” senior captain and second baseman Michelle Lerner said. “We’re really focusing on sticking together, and no matter what happens, make sure that we’re here for each other, and that’s going to get us through a lot.”

The trio of captains will lead a team of young talent expected to make a significant impact this season for the Cherry and White.

“I think people have stepped up right away,” Fagan said. “They’re taking advantage of being the one everyone’s counting on. We all count on each other.”

“We did lose a decent amount of starters, so it was big for the new people to immediately step up and take the roles that they know they’re going to play,” Lerner added.

The Owls’ first game is against East Tennessee State at the Georgia State Panther Invitational in Atlanta. Temple’s schedule consists of two road trips to Florida tournaments and 14 games, some of which are doubleheaders, at Ambler Field.

“We’re a completely different team than we were last year,” said DiPietro, who was referring to the Owls’ slow start last season when they lost 18 games in a row after winning their first game. “We have a core group that is very good, and they’ve really stuck together, and with the kids we’re adding next year, I think the program is really going up.”

“We don’t feel like the people in our conference respect us,” Lerner said. “They should be a little scared of us this year.”

Connor Showalter can be reached at connor.showalter@temple.edu.

Sports Rewind

Baseball
The Owls ended a six-game losing streak Saturday, topping Richmond, 8-3. But the Spiders still took two games in the series, leaving coach Rob Valli’s squad with a record of 17-26 (11-9 A-10).

Despite taking only one game on the road at Richmond last week, the Owls are still in contention for an Atlantic Ten Conference Tournament bid. They sit in fifth place, a half game ahead of Massachusetts. Six teams make the playoffs.

Senior outfielder Sean Barksdale got his 153rd career RBI on Sunday, putting him one short of tying a Temple record. He’ll have a chance to tie and surpass the record Wednesday when the Owls head to Maryland Eastern Shore for their final non-conference game this season.

Softball
The Owls had a disappointing end to their season Sunday following two losses to St. Bonaventure in a doubleheader. One win would have given the Owls entry into the A-10 Championships.

The team dropped its first game, 5-1, but had a chance to take the second, which went into extra innings. The Bonnies scored and won in the 12th inning, 4-3, securing a spot in the playoffs. The Owls ended their season with a 15-25 (6-8 A-10) record.

In the final contest, senior first baseman Courtney Norene hit her sixth home run of the season in the second game, giving her a record-setting 28 career home runs.

Track and Field
Both the men’s and women’s track and field teams found success in last weekend’s A-10 Championships.
The men earned a third-place overall finish, the best they’ve ever achieved at the A-10s. Junior sprinter Brad McFadden ran a time of 55.06 seconds in the 400-meter hurdles, giving him a first-place finish. Altogether, the men’s team took 127 points, behind first-place Charlotte (217.5) and second-place Rhode Island (130).

The women’s team, which finished fourth overall, was led by sophomore sprinter Paris Williams, who earned the team’s only individual title in the 400-meter dash with a time of 55.06 seconds. The women ended with 88 points. Like their counterparts, Charlotte’s women’s team came in first.

Lacrosse
After a less-than-stellar season, the lacrosse team finished on a winning note with a 15-5 victory against Lafayette Wednesday at Geasey Field. Despite outshooting the Owls 32-24, the Leopards couldn’t break the Owls’ defense. Sophomore goalkeeper Katie Phillips had a career-high seven saves.
For the first time in three years, the Owls didn’t participate in the A-10 Tournament. Three seniors are leaving the team.

Name degrades softball

Oral sex jokes will never go out of style, but there is a time and place for them. Ninth grade sex-ed class, for example. Not on co-ed recreational softball team T-shirts.  But, I saw an entire co-ed intramural softball team wearing T-shirts that read, in bright yellow letters, “Co-ed = Mo’ head.”

Contrary to what some may think, this is not as innocent as some might claim. This type of language is both sexist and immature, particularly when demonstrated at a function that serves to blend men and women as equals in relation to sports, a goal that has been hard to accomplish.

To wear a shirt that disrespects women at a sports function also disrespects the sport and undermines what universities attempt to accomplish by providing co-recreational sports. That is, to think of men and women as athletically equal.

This team name is not only worn by an entire softball team, it is registered as the official team name on Temple’s Campus Recreation 2009 intramural softball schedule.

Director of Campus Recreation Steve Young said in the rush to create schedules after registration deadlines have passed, inappropriate team names are sometimes unintentionally overlooked. He said if a team name is blatantly offensive and the department catches it, teams are forced to change the name.

“This one, I believe, was an oversight,” Young said about the “Co-ed = Mo’ head” team name.
This might also explain another distasteful team name on the schedule, “The D.C. Snipers.”

But Young goes on to explain that while Campus Recreation can regulate team names to some extent, it can’t stop them from wearing the T-shirts.

“We’ll take responsibility for not catching the team name,” Young said, “but when they put the shirts on…we’d be hard-pressed to get involved in censorship.”

While Campus Recreation should have noticed the team name and prevented it from being registered, the responsibility lies mostly with the students wearing the shirts.

“When I first saw [the shirts], I was really offended,” said Kate Cody, a junior kinesiology major and former high school softball player. “I feel like [softball] is a sport that has become a woman’s sport. It’s like a slap in the face.”

Cody plays for a co-recreational intramural softball team at Temple and saw the shirts after a game a few weeks ago.

“No one has really been offended by the team name,” said Joe Soloski, captain of the “Co-ed = Mo’ head” team, via Facebook. “Some girls think it’s gross…but most people have just laughed.”

Gross? More like disgusting. While intramural softball is just a recreational game to pass the time and stay in shape, it shouldn’t be a free-for-all.

I’ve played softball for the past 12 years, and there was a time when it was one of the most important things in my life. This team name makes a mockery of female athletes and makes Temple look like a careless university.

“If someone came up to me and said [the team name] offended them,” Soloski said. “I would tell them to relax…it’s just a creative team name for softball, and if you’re offended, then I am sorry that you are that uptight.”

For the sake of female athletes everywhere, I hope others are just as “uptight” as I am.

Leah Mafrica can be reached at leah.mafrica@temple.edu .

Long losing streak impairs first half of softball season

Anybody can be optimistic when wins are coming easily.

It’s when wins are few and far between that the character of a team is truly put to the test. Upon starting its Atlantic Ten Conference schedule, the softball team is hopeful that it’s done being tested.

To say the season has been a tumultuous one would be an understatement. After starting the year with a win over Georgetown in the Florida International Tournament, the Owls proceeded to lose 18 games in a row before finally snapping that streak with a win against Wagner last week.

Following that win, Temple (3-19 overall, 1-3 A-10) started off Friday’s game against conference foe Charlotte strong, holding the 49ers scoreless for four innings before faltering and ultimately losing the game, 4-0. Instead of being discouraged, the team proceeded to ride freshman pitcher Sarah Reynolds’ arm to victory the following day. Reynolds pitched 10 innings of four-hit ball to give the Owls their first conference win of the year.

While Reynolds took care of the pitching, junior catcher Krystle Metzler and freshman shortstop Jess Hirschbuhl contributed to the offense. Metzler smoked a double into left field in the bottom of the seventh inning to tie the game and force extra innings. After Reynolds retired the next nine Charlotte hitters, Hirschbuhl doubled in senior outfielder Amanda Carver to win the game, 3-2.

While salvaging a series split is nice, the team can also take value in the way it was won, coach Joe DiPietro said.

“Charlotte got the two [runs] in the top of the sixth, and we came right back, which is something we haven’t done all year,” DiPietro said. “The team came out fired up.”

While the Owls don’t face Charlotte the rest of the regular season, the team believes it can use the win to help it the rest of the year.

“Before you go into every other game, you identify that winning feeling. You remember how the at-bats and pitches felt,” Metzler said. “You can allude back to those feelings whenever you’re feeling down.”

While the Owls’ slow start can be attributed to any number of reasons, youth is one often associated with inconsistency. However, the fact that DiPietro’s roster consists of 10 freshmen could ultimately help them.

“The freshmen are really starting to pull their weight,” Metzler said. “We’ve got a good mesh of senior leadership, and the freshmen are starting to step it up now that we’re in conference play.”

“In the long run, our youth is going to help,” Hirschbuhl added. “We’re becoming a family. It just takes wins to get there.”

To get those wins, the Owls are going to have to start producing more runs. Outside of senior first baseman Courtney Norene, the team has struggled to find consistency swinging the bats. Norene, who is hitting .300 on the year to go along with her nine RBIs, is much more effective when the rest of her teammates are in the swing of things.

“We know we need to work on our hitting,” Metzler said. “Our pitching and defense are there. We just need to spend a lot of time hitting.”

“We’ve been playing the fundamentals right,” Hirschbuhl added. “We just need to start scrapping up as many runs as we can.”

Despite their record, the Cherry and White are not quite ready to give up on the season.

“The A-10 is our second season,” DiPietro said. “We’re 1-3, which isn’t the best spot to be in, but with our upcoming schedule, our goal is still to make the playoffs.”

“Conference is honestly all that matters,” Metzler added. “That’s what we’re focusing on.”

To get their confidence up, the Owls will certainly need to start winning games on a consistent basis. After Sunday’s doubleheader with Manhattan was canceled due to weather, the Owls return to action Friday in Mt. Vernon, Va., to take on George Washington.

Kyle Gauss can be reached at kyle.gauss@temple.edu.

New coaches top summer moves

The start of the 2008-09 academic year brings fresh faces to Temple – and they aren’t just freshmen.

Temple athletics will welcome four new coaches this fall, two of them in sports that made it to the NCAA
Tournament just last year. Such new beginnings for the Owls aren’t strictly limited to North Philadelphia. Two alumni joined the professional ranks in sports this summer.

Here’s a recap of the summer sports news:
Women’s Basketball
After spending eight seasons at Temple and amassing a record of 172-80, including six NCAA Tournament
appearances and four Atlantic Ten titles, coach Dawn Staley left the Owls for the University of South Carolina. She was replaced by Tonya Cardoza, a former teammate of Staley’s at the University of Virginia and a 14-year assistant to hall of fame coach Geno Auriemma at the University of Connecticut. Cardoza, a guard specialist, brings championship experience with her to North Broad Street, as she helped the Huskies win five NCAA titles and 464 games during her time in Storrs, Conn. Dan Durkin, Waynetta Veney and Brittany Hunter have joined her staff as assistants.
Men’s Basketball
After helping the Owls reach their first NCAA Tournament since 2001, guard Mark Tyndale joined the Adelaide 36ers of the Australian National Basketball League in August. Tyndale, a Philadelphia native, averaged 15.9 points last season and led the Owls in rebounding (7.2) and assists (4.3) per game. He finished his career at Temple ranked in the school’s top 20 in scoring and rebounding and the top 10 in assists and steals.
The man who was at the helm of that NCAA Tournament appearance, coach Fran Dunphy, signed a contract
extension through the 2013-14 season. Dunphy, who holds a career record of 343-194, will also take his squad to the inaugural Charleston Classic in November. In addition, Temple has announced it will play two games against city rivals La Salle and Saint Joseph’s, as well as Rhode Island.
Baseball
After the Owls were eliminated from the Atlantic Ten Conference Championship in late May, left-handed pitcher Mike Mongiardini signed a professional contract in July with the Kalamazoo Kings of the Frontier League, an independent professional baseball league based in the Midwest. He made his pitching debut the next day, throwing five scoreless, hitless innings in the team’s 7-5 win. During his senior season at Temple, Mongiardini went 3-2 with a 4.08 ERA in 11 starts, leading the Owls in strikeouts with 43 in 57.1innings. Mongiardini also led the baseball program to its first postseason victory in five years when he pitched 7.2 innings and allowed only one earned run against St. Bonaventure in the A-10 Tournament.
More than one month later, Mongiardini’s Kalamazoo Kings’ teammate, Brandon Anderson, joined the Temple Owls baseball team as an assistant. Anderson, who has played with the Kings for two seasons, rejoins Temple coach Rob Valli. Anderson played under Valli for two seasons at Gloucester County College in New Jersey.
Softball
Temple headed north up Broad Street to find a replacement following the resignation of three-year coach Casey Dickson. Joe DiPietro, who spent six seasons as La Salle University’s softball coach, takes over for the Owls, who finished the season 15-24, with a record of 5-15 in the A-10.

Women’s Tennis
First-year coach Jill Breslin resigned, opting to take the same position at Bryn Mawr College instead of defending Temple’s A-10 Championship. Breslin, the A-10 Coach of the Year in her first season at the helm, helped the Owls reach the NCAA Tournament for only the second time in the program’s history. A successor has yet to be named.

Track and Field
The Owls hired former assistant Eric Mobley as the teams’ coach after Stefanie Scalessa stepped down from her position. Mobley, who was at Temple from 2002-04, spent the last four years as coach at the College of New Jersey. He will replace Scalessa, who became the first woman to coach a men’s sport at Temple and helped revive the cross country program after 20 years of dormancy in 2005.

Jennifer Reardon can be reached at
jennifer.reardon@temple.edu.