It’s a little past noon on April 16, and in four hours, the Portland State softball team will walk on to Howe Field in Eugene to play the Oregon Ducks. Yet, the impending game seems far from the minds of the athletes.
They are spread throughout a massive touring bus, some listening to iPods, while others chat or study. A couple of hours with nothing much to do is welcomed respite from a hectic schedule that allows for little else than school, practice, working out and playing games.
Catcher Brandi Scoggins, one of the team’s vocal leaders and only a sophomore, is plopped in the middle of the aisle getting her hair braided.
Mandy Hill, the team’s ace and emotional leader, has claimed a seat near the back and is absentmindedly stroking her mane of red hair as she peers out the window.
Assistant coaches Tobin Echo-Hawk and Jennie Shollenberger lounge at the front of the bus, munching on Subway sandwiches and fiddling with their phones. Head coach Amy Hayes has a brief moment of panic when she can’t find her Blackberry.
It’s on the seat. Dilemma resolved.
“I thought I put it in my bag,” Hayes says. “That was this morning.” She looks a little tired. A 58-game season will do that to a person.
As the bus heads south toward Eugene, Hayes stands up with a DVD in either hand.
“Which movie do you guys want to watch?” she asks. “We’ve got Bad News Bears and Major League.”
This choice immediately sparks great debate among the players. After a brief, and very loud, discussion, the team votes for Bad News Bears, by a hair.
“We can watch the other one on the way home,” Hayes consoles the Major League fans.
Some of the athletes on the bus never expected to be here in the first place. Meghan Gendron, one of three seniors and a reliable presence out of the bullpen, didn’t think she would pitch at the Division I level after competing for Mt. Hood Community College for two seasons.
Instead, she’s preparing to start just her sixth game for the Vikings, and it’s against intrastate rival Oregon. The team is looking for some revenge after the Ducks stole two games at Erv Lind Stadium a couple of weeks earlier.
“I came in here in the fall just wanting to finish my senior year up,” Gendron says. “I’ve overcome a lot. I’m just trying to put my time in and help the team out.”
There are no days off
A week before the Oregon game, the team sweats it out in the bowels of the Stott Center. As the players lift weights and do conditioning exercises, they fall into easy banter with one another.
They’re here for their weekly strength and conditioning training under the careful direction of Scott Fabian, the team’s strength and conditioning coach. He’s a stocky guy, and with his short-cropped hair, his image resembles a drill sergeant. Today, he’s fired up.
“Where were you on Monday?” he asks Jana Rae Slayton, the team’s junior first baseman and an anchor in the middle of the lineup.
Slayton shrugs and says she thought the workout was optional.
“There are no days off in Division I softball,” Fabian barks as the team works through an extensive list of strength exercises.
Mondays are technically off-days for the Vikings, but Fabian says the extra day is important, even if it isn’t mandatory.
“Softball is like baseball. You can play yourself out of shape pretty quick,” Fabian said from the weight room on May 15. “We try to keep the strength we’ve made. We try to maintain it.”
Strength is important in softball because even the slightest changes can throw off a player’s swing or pitching motion, Fabian said.
“You have to lift. It’s just part of college athletics now,” he said. “Major universities have huge weight rooms. They’re not empty.”
Imparting wisdom
“Meghan’s getting the start,” Hayes says, referring to Gendron, as we wait out the steady rainfall inside the visitor’s dugout at Howe Field. It’s 45 minutes before first pitch, and Hayes is getting into game mode. “She’s a senior, and Oregon hasn’t seen her yet.”
During the downpour, the Oregon field crew had been maneuvering a white tarp on and off the diamond. The rain is letting up now, and it appears the game will start soon, so the crew scurries back out.
As the crew works, backup catcher Kristin Wilson warms Gendron up in the bullpen. The lanky pitcher is popping the mitt. Hayes stops by the bullpen session to impart some wisdom, as she’s a former pitcher and knows how to handle a pitching staff.
“As long as you have your stuff going today, you’ll be fine,” she tells Gendron, giving her an affectionate pat.
Gendron is ready, and so is Brittany Rumfelt, the Ducks’ crafty left-handed freshman. Hayes calls her team around her.
“They’re going to come after us,” she says sternly, staring each of her players in the eye. “They don’t want to lose again on their home field. Let’s get after it, ladies.”
Play like it’s your last
The Vikings get after it, but so do the Ducks. After Gendron gives up two runs in the bottom of the first, the Vikings respond with two of their own in the second inning.
Unfortunately for the Vikings, they’re on their way to giving up a big inning to Oregon.
Ducks left fielder Sari-Jane Jenkins doubles in two more runs for Oregon, and just like that, Gendron is done for the day. When Hayes takes the ball from her, Gendron’s disappointment is palpable.
Back in the dugout, Gendron stands alone in the back. Tears well up and redden her eyes, and she folds her arms around herself tightly. Teammates stream by to ask if she’s doing okay.
“Yeah,” Gendron says, barely audible. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”
Gendron gathers herself just in time to see Latham give up back-to-back home runs. Hill, the steadfast ace for this squad, trots out, and after a few tense moments, ends the inning on a called strike three. She stares solemnly at the ground as she walks off the field.
“If I start a game or if I close a game, it’s me against the hitter,” Hill says. “I don’t want them to get a hit and I never want them to score.”
Yet the damage has been done. It’s 8-2 and there’s little hope of winning the game now.
The team, however, refuses to give up. During each at-bat, the players hang from the dugout rail, chanting and cheering on whoever is batting.
When Slayton hits a fifth-inning home run, the dugout empties and the players crowd the plate as if Slayton just hit a walk-off homer to win a championship.
The game ends without a real Vikings threat, and the fancy Howe Field scoreboard reads 8-4, Ducks. After a brief meeting on the field, the team heads back to the bus. Tonight they’ll be dining at Eugene’s finest: Wendy’s.
They’ve changed out of their uniforms and are wearing Vikings swag. Suddenly they look very much like normal Portland State students, many of them still teens.
The stress of the loss has ebbed, and they are laughing and arguing over how much food to get and what movie to watch on the way home.
‘We did all we could’
Over the coming weekend, the team will travel to Santa Clara and do exactly what is necessary to have a chance at securing the Pacific Coast Softball Conference Championship: They’ll beat the Broncos four times.
That the team will miss a chance at playing in its second NCAA Regional Tournament in three years is, in some ways, inconsequential. That they came up just one game short will hurt, but for only the second time competing at the Division I level, the Vikings will win 30 games.
It’s an accomplishment. But Hill, who already has a job lined up with a Portland law firm after graduation, touches on something far more important than wins and losses and conference championship rings.
“We have such friendships going on,” Hill says. “I’m going to miss the girls. You say you’re going to stay friends, but they’re going to graduate too and live their own lives. I’m going to miss seeing their faces every day. We didn’t win conference but we won in our hearts. We did all we could. We played every game like it was our last.”
Strong links
The Vikings have a pre-game ritual in which the team clips climbing hook keychains together to form a circle before taking the field. They hang the linked keychains on the dugout rail for good luck, with a stuffed Viktor E. Viking sitting in the middle of the hooks.
Senior Mandy Hill explains:
We have one word at the beginning of the game, what we’re going to bring to the game, like dedication, heart, fire. We all choose our own individual word and we link it up with the whole team, so it’s unbreakable. We’re all going to bring it; we’re not just one person, we’re a team. We’re full circle. Everyone has their own word, and it just shows what we’re going to bring and how we’re going to accomplish it.