The Longwood Lancers softball team saved some of their best regular season conference play for the end, rattling off six wins in their final seven Big South games to earn the second seed going into this week’s tournament. They will face USC Upstate Thursday, May 8 at 12 p.m., a team they swept on the road less than two weeks ago.
Longwood finished the season 11-7 in Big South Conference play, and 20-30 overall after a challenging non-conference slate to open the season. According to Warren Nolan’s current strength of schedule ratings, Dr. Megan Brown’s team is ranked 85 out of 309 Division 1 teams. Longwood played the likes of top-ranked Texas and then top ten-ranked Georgia in the first two weeks, and played a combined five games against other Top 25-ranked teams in Virginia Tech, UVA and Liberty, all in an effort to prepare the Lancers to excel in conference play.
“It’s one thing to watch a team on TV,” Brown said. “It’s another thing to be on the other side of the field from them. One of the things that our program is striving to do is win a Big South Tournament Championship, win a regional championship. …The other piece is we use it for recruiting. A lot of the young women that were on our team came here to play those teams. They wanted to play the best teams in the country, but they love Longwood.”
Longwood was picked second in the Big South preseason poll, with third baseman Sophia Knock picking up preseason player of the year honors. As conference play rolled around, the Lancers had a shaky start, dropping all three games against Winthrop on the road. The Lancers found their footing and swept both Gardner-Webb and Presbyterian, creating a six-game-winning streak. “Our mentality has changed. We were playing a little uptight the first week and we were trying to make things happen,” said sophomore catcher Maryanna Guy.
“Our mentality of being aggressive in the [batter’s] box has gone from, ‘Oh, I hope she pitches a strike for me to hit,’ to, ‘The pitcher better not pitch a strike because we're going to crush it.’ That’s what we’ve been going these past few weeks,” Guy said. She leads the team in homeruns with 11, and RBI with 28, and was named Big South Player of the Week twice this season.
Brown’s breakout star was freshman Brooke Bennett, who led the team in hits and total bases and was the only Lancer named First Team All-Conference. Avery Jefferson, Er’ron Burton, and Guy were named to the All-Conference Second Team. Avery Drake was named Honorable Mention All-Conference, while Bennett and Sophia Pisacano were named to the conference’s All-Freshman Team.
From the pitcher’s mound, senior Er’ron Burton and junior Maggie Chapin have been the key contributors. Burton’s earned run average of 2.49 leads Longwood while recording 64 strikeouts. Chapin leads the team in wins (8) and strikeouts, punching out 109 batters in 101.1 innings pitched.
“We have three new pitchers this year,” Chapin said. “It’s really about building confidence and getting into that routine and mentality of, ‘This is my job…this is what I’m going to do,’ and we’ve really found that groove.”
Throughout their success this season, the most notable thing about the team aside from the winning itself has been the team cohesion and dugout atmosphere. The Lancers pride themselves on being a well-knit group, and the evidence is clear.
“It’s a blessing,” Brown said. “The young women that we have here make the program. They work hard to get to know each other, to spend time with one another on and off the field. …They wanted to have a team and not just a group of individuals.”
The winner of the Longwood-USC Upstate game will advance in the Big South Tournament to play on Friday at Noon. The losing team will play in an elimination game later on Thursday at 5 p.m. with all games being broadcast on ESPN+.
