The Portland State women’s softball season begins tonight in the team’s first year of competition as part of the Big Sky conference. After dominating the Pacific Coast Softball Conference division in years past, Viking softball is favored in preseason polls to win the conference title. This season’s schedule has the team away for nearly a month and a half of nonconference play, including competition against nationally ranked teams. The Vikings head to the Kajikawa Classic first for a six-game stretch.
Inaugural softball season underway
The Portland State women’s softball season begins tonight in the team’s first year of competition as part of the Big Sky conference. After dominating the Pacific Coast Softball Conference division in years past, Viking softball is favored in preseason polls to win the conference title. This season’s schedule has the team away for nearly a month and a half of nonconference play, including competition against nationally ranked teams. The Vikings head to the Kajikawa Classic first for a six-game stretch.
Portland State will come into the 2013 season off two consecutive NCAA tournament bids. Returning to the squad is senior pitcher Anna Bertrand, 2012’s unanimous PCSC Mountain Division Pitcher of the Year. Bertrand compiled a 23-13 record last season with a 1.79 ERA.
“Anna is vital to our success,” head coach Tobin Echo-Hawk said. “How her performance goes will determine how the team performance goes. She has high expectations for herself.”
Last season, the Vikings suffered from offensive inconsistency, a problem they have worked hard to correct.
“This year is a little bit of a different look,” Echo-Hawk said. “We’re a little bit more of a powerful offense—we have a couple kids [who] add power throughout the course of the game.”
Along with Bertrand, Portland State has three other seniors coming back to fill leadership roles: second baseman Carly McEachran, left fielder Sadie Lopez and pinch hitter Alexa Morales. McEachran was second on the team in runs last season, with 21.
“They’ve been there,” Echo-Hawk said. “They’ve been in the championship almost all of their years here. They know what to expect and what to do, and the younger people on the team are really buying into this idea.”
Echo-Hawk also noted that the depth at every position is encouraging, and not only from the senior players. “This is the most talented group since I’ve been here,” she said. “If one person isn’t going to get it done, someone will step in, which is a good way to raise the level of the play.”
Though the Vikings are making a big move from the PCSC into the Big Sky, their competitors are not unfamiliar to the squad. The new seven-team conference will include Portland State, the University of North Dakota, Southern Utah University, Idaho State University, the University of Northern Colorado, Weber State University and California State University, Sacramento. The only schools that Portland State did not previously play against in the PCSC are Big Sky newcomers North Dakota and Southern Utah.
Before the Vikings can move on to conference play, however, they have a stacked lineup of games through mid-March. “We play six weeks in a row,” Echo-Hawk said. “The kids are really excited to see what they can do against these nationally ranked teams.”
The Vikings will get started at the Kajikawa Classic in Tempe, hosted by Arizona State University. The first game is scheduled for 4 p.m. today against San Jose State University, followed by a matchup with 2012 Mountain West runner-up Boise State University on Friday at 9 a.m. The full schedule and live stats can be found at goviks.com.
