Bowling Green State University Athletics
Falcons Travel To UVa Tournament This Weekend
March 20, 2001 | Softball
March 20, 2001
BOWLING GREEN, Ohio -
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The Bowling Green State University softball team, after playing in a pair of tournaments last week, hits the road for one final tourney before opening Mid-American Conference play. The Falcons (7-7) will head to Charlottesville, Va., for this weekend's Who's Hoo Tournament.
In that double-round-robin tourney, the Falcons will open with a Friday (March 23) doubleheader against Penn State University, beginning at 1:00 p.m. The next day, BG will meet the host University of Virginia in another 1:00 p.m. twinbill. The Falcons will close tourney play with Sunday's (March 25) doubleheader vs. Liberty University. First pitch is set for 9:00 a.m. All games will be played at The Park.
Following the UVa tourney, the Falcons will return home to begin MAC action with a home doubleheader vs. the arch-rival University of Toledo on Tuesday, March 27. Game one will begin at 2:00 p.m. at the BGSU Softball Field.
HEAD COACH LEIGH ROSS-SHAW: Leigh Ross-Shaw is in her third season as a collegiate head coach, and has an overall record of 61-52. Ross-Shaw has a Mid-American Conference mark of 28-18 after leading the Falcons to a MAC East Division co-championship last year.
Ross-Shaw assumed the top job after two years as BG's assistant coach. The Ottawa Lake, Mich., native came to the Falcon program in 1996 after serving as a high-school head coach, at Notre Dame Academy in Toledo, for four seasons.
Ross-Shaw, a 1992 graduate of the University of Toledo, still holds numerous UT and MAC records, and remains the all-time conference leader in batting average (.398), at-bats and hits. She hit a MAC-record .447 as a senior en route to All-America Second-Team honors. On February 2, she was inducted into the UT Athletics Hall of Fame.
Amy Kyler is in her third season as Ross-Shaw's assistant. Kyler, quite possibly the top pitcher in Cleveland State history, graduated from CSU in 1997. She played for the Carolina Diamonds of the Women's Pro Softball League for two years before pitching for the Akron Racers in each of the last two seasons.
LAST TIME OUT: The Falcons went 5-4 last week, competing in a pair of tournaments ... BGSU was 3-2 in the Coastal Carolina Classic (March 12-14), winning the first three games of that tourney before losing to Virginia and East Carolina ... last weekend (March 16-18), the Brown and Orange split four games at the Winthrop Invitational ... BGSU faced East Carolina three times in last week's nine games.
THE OPPONENTS: Penn State will bring a 13-7 record to Charlotteville. By this weekend, the Nittany Lions will have been idle for nearly two weeks, since posting a 4-3 record at the Speedline Invitational in Tampa, Fla. PSU has won 11 of the last 14 games since beginning the year at 2-4. Last year, the Lions set a school record for wins, going 38-19 overall and 12-5 in Big Ten Conference action. Robin Petrini has a 130-108-1 record in her fifth year at the school, and she is 149-141-1 in her sixth year as a collegiate head coach. More information on the team can be found at www.psu.edu/sports.
Virginia will enter Friday's action with a 22-8 record, and the Cavaliers have won 18 of the last 20 games. Last week, UVa played in the same two tournaments that the Falcons attended, and the Cavaliers finished first in the gold flight of the Winthrop Invitational last weekend. Last year, the team went 27-38 overall and 3-5 in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Head coach Cheryl Sprangel is 122-100 in her fourth year at the school. The former head coach at Toledo, Sprangel is 583-455-1 in her 17th year overall. More information can be found on the web at www.virginiasports.com.
Liberty is 9-20 on the year, heading into Tuesday's (March 20) scheduled doubleheader at Virginia Tech. Last week, the Lady Flames went 4-7 on a trip to Florida, including a 3-4 mark in the USF-Clearwater Parks and Rec Tournament. LU went 34-29 last year, including a 9-1 Big South Conference record and a league regular-season title. Paul Wetmore begins the week with a 231-191 mark in his ninth year, all at Liberty. The school's athletic web site is www.liberty.edu/athletics.
THE SERIES: The Falcons have faced Penn State once, and that meeting came at last year's (March 25, 2000) Who's Hoo Tournament. PSU posted an 8-0 win in a five-inning game.
BGSU and Virginia are now tied, 2-2, in the all-time series between the schools, after UVa's 5-1 win Tuesday (March 13) at the Coastal Carolina Classic. In the other series meetings, the teams split a doubleheader in Columbia, S.C., in 1985, and the Falcons captured a 3-0 decision last spring (March 24, 2000) at UVa's own tourney.
The Falcons have never met Liberty on the softball diamond.
FALCONS BY THE NUMBERS: The Falcons are hitting .206 as a team this year, while the opponents are hitting .289 ... BGSU has a team ERA of 3.42, while the foes have a 3.27 ERA ... when the Falcons' 29-0 loss to #2-ranked Arizona is taken out of the equation, BGSU is hitting .216 to the opponents' .262, and the team ERA drops to 1.77 ... seniors Nikki Rouhana (.300), Jen Domschot (.278) and Lynsey Ebel (.270) are the team's top-three in batting, while the team's fourth senior, Angie Domschot, leads the Falcons with nine runs scored ... Jen Domschot and sophomore Libby Voshell have two homers apiece, while junior Renee Rosemeier leads the Brown and Orange with four doubles and nine RBI ... junior Andrea Genter paces the pitchers with a 3-0 record, while classmate Jessie Milosek has a 1.86 ERA and 17 strikeouts to lead the team in both categories.
COACHING TIES: Leigh Ross-Shaw will match wits with her former coach again this weekend ... Virginia's Cheryl Sprangel was the head coach at Toledo while Ross-Shaw (then Leigh Ross) was the team's leadoff hitter and centerfielder ... the Falcons and Cavaliers will meet for the second and third times in a week-and-a-half span ... the teams met at the CCU Classic last Tuesday (March 13), and will meet in Charlottesville Saturday (March 24) ... Ross-Shaw and Sprangel have split their two previous meetings.
VOSHELL SETS RECORD, WE THINK: Sophomore Libby Voshell slammed two homers in the Falcons' 9-0, six-inning win over Illinois last Monday (March 12) ... school single-game records are sketchy, but it is believed to be the first time in school history that a Falcon player has had two round-trippers in the same contest ... Voshell had three homers during all of her freshman season ... in addition to homers, she also set personal single-game bests in runs scored (three) and RBI (five) vs. the Illini.
JEN DOMSCHOT GOES DEEP: Senior Jen Domschot hit .320, with a team-best .600 slugging percentage, in last week's nine games ... two of her eight hits on the week were homers ... Domschot went deep against both East Carolina and North Carolina A&T ... in the ECU game Tuesday (March 13), her two-run shot erased a 2-1 Lady Pirate lead and proved to be the game-winning hit ... with the two homers, she now has 10 in her career ... her next homer will tie her with Colleen Bates (1997-2000) for the BGSU career record ... in that N.C. A&T contest, Jen Domschot went 3-for-3 with three RBI and two runs scored.
EBEL RIGHT BEHIND: Another senior, Lynsey Ebel, had her first homer of the season in that North Carolina A&T game ... Ebel now has nine in her career, good for third in school history ... she trails only Colleen Bates (11) and current teammate Jen Domschot (10).
WILSON WALLOPS ONE: Sophomore Crystal Wilson joined the home run derby last week, hitting her first career blast in a game vs. Virginia Tech (March 17) ... Wilson was 3-for-8 at the plate during all of last year, and she already has six hits in 24 at-bats this season.
GENTER'S GOING GREAT: Junior pitcher Andrea Genter had a 2-0 record and a 1.50 ERA last week ... Genter, who entered the season with a career total of 41 strikeouts, had 12 in 14 innings last week ... she threw a pair of five-hitters in wins over East Carolina (3-2, March 13) and Saint Louis (7-1, March 17) ... in the latter contest, Genter did not walk a batter, while striking out a career-high eight ... on the week, she allowed opponents to hit just .208 against her ... Genter has a 3-0 record this year after going 8-5 last spring.
HARD-LUCK HOULE: Sophomore McKenna Houle has had some tough luck in the season's early going ... Houle has a 1-4 record on the year, but had several solid pitching performances result in setbacks ... she scattered just five hits in a complete-game effort vs. East Carolina Wednesday (March 14), but came out on the short end of a 1-0 loss ... she tossed a complete-game seven-hitter four days later against ECU, but dropped a 3-1 decision ... Houle did get a win in a 6-2 game vs. Coastal Carolina last Monday (March 12), giving up just one earned run in five innings.
FEAST OR FAMINE: The Falcons have scored six or more runs in six of this year's 14 games, but has scored three or fewer in each of the other eight ... BGSU has been shut out three times this year, getting no-hit once and one-hit on two occasions ... the Falcons had at least two hits in every one of last season's 51 games, and BG was shut out six times last year.
HOMER HAPPY: Entering the Leigh Ross-Shaw (head-coaching) Era, the BGSU single-season record for homers was eight ... Ross-Shaw's first team obliterated that mark by hitting 19 round-trippers in 1999 ... not to be outdone, the 2000 squad matched that record ... this year, BGSU has a total of seven homers in 14 games.
