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Author: The Crusader Staff Writer, Ellie Ripchik

Did you know that ���������� has two softball teams? There is the main softball team that plays in Conference Carolina and then there is a developmental team that plays different junior colleges and community colleges. This is the first year that there is going to be a conference tournament for the developmental team. The main softball team is coached by Tony Mele and the new assistant coach is Samantha West. This will be Tony’s fourth year with the team with a 32-win streak in the 2022 spring season.

The new addition to the softball team is assistant coach, Samantha West. She played at Tusculum University for 4 years as an infielder. This is her first year as a coach at Belmont Abbey. These two coaches are ready for some softball.

In the last season, the main team went 32-15 overall and was 15-9 in the conference. Mackenzie Allison, an infielder believes, the main team “exceeded coach Tony’s expectations from the fall”. They went through some adversity throughout the season with pretty bad injuries that affected the team tremendously. In the end, they pulled through and finished with a high ranking. One of the best Mackenzie Allsion said during her sophomore year her favorite part was “beating Mount Olive a (top-ranked team) in the conference tournament.”

Mackenzie believes that this year will be even better. The Devo team had a rough start. According to midfielder Elizabeth Tucker, “we didn’t start off the season as well as anyone hoped, but after some long hours of practice and conditioning, we learned how to communicate about things that needed to be fixed and eventually then ended the season with a long win streak”. Due to a lot of postponed games and cancellations, they ended their season being 8-6.

During their season they went through a lot of injuries, these injuries led to some of the girls moving to different positions but everyone rallied and worked hard to have a fun season. Saige Stanley, a junior infielder, has high hopes for the developmental team’s upcoming season. She said, “I’d like to think that our record would be more than positive this year.” She feels if “we communicate with one another on and off the field and share a strong bond with each other throughout the season we won’t have to worry about losing.” With the new assistant coach, that means a new head coach for the Devo team. There are some improvements that Stanley thinks the team needs to work on, “putting down bunts and being more vocal in the dugout.” Overall, she is very excited to start the upcoming season strong and win softball games.

Maddie Phillips, a sophomore midfielder, is ready to play some softball. Maddie believes, “this season is a whole different culture than the previous year.” She has high expectations that they will win the conference championship this year. She says that “the dedication and hard work of this team all play a tremendous role in how we will perform this year. Believing in one another and performing to our best ability, they will be hard to beat.”

This fall the main team gets to play the University of North Carolina Charlotte, they are part of Conference USA and are a high-ranked division one school. Maddie says that “UNCC is definitely going to be a tough school to play in but I think we have a very good chance of beating them.” Maddie is excited and ready to crush UNCC because they beat them badly last year.

Please come out and support these women as they strive to have a great winning season on both teams.

This article was originally posted in the Fall 2022, Issue 2 of The Crusader Newspaper. Download the full issue.