University of Massachusets Athletics
2006 NCAA Softball Amherst Regional
May 20, 2006 | Softball
May 20, 2006
Recap | Box Score | Photo Gallery
UMass Post-Game Quotes:
Head Coach Elaine Sortino, opening statement:
"It was a war. It was a real true war. My hats off to Lehigh. They kept coming back at it. Their kids are extremely resilient, but so are ours. I thought we had a lot of different ways to lose that game mentally and physically. We kept playing through some very very difficult situations. I thought we pushed some runners across and settled down in the eighth inning. Our offense came to life and gave ourselves a chance to win. It was a well played game, a lot of big plays in key situations, both offensively and defensively."
Kristi Stefanoni on her big throw:
"It was one of those plays that just happened and you don't remember. When you get a good hit, you don't remember anything because it just happened, you were there. I can't tell you how deep I was or how the throw came up. All I know is that I came up and threw the ball and our catcher did an outstanding job of picking it out of the dirt. It's something we've been working on in practice. It's all coming together. That play would not have happened if KJ had not picked it out of the dirt. She gets just as much credit as I do."
Brandice Balschmiter on coming back from giving up the tying runs in the bottom of the eight inning:
"We had to be really resilient to go through that. I may have made a mental lapse (giving up the game-tying double) on that last pitch. I knew we were going to come back...It was a battle mentally and physically towards the end."
Sortino on if she had time to appreciate what was going on out on the field:
"No. Absolutely not. There's no rest for the weary. You can't backward think, you always have to be forward thinking and thinking ahead ahead ahead, pitches ahead, plays ahead. There's no time to take anything in."
Lauren Proctor on her two sacrifice flies:
"I was really excited to be at bat. Those hits wouldn't have meant anything . They were outs if it weren't for the players that stuck with it and got on base before me. I felt very fortunate to have Candice in front of me, on third base, because she's the wheels. I knew as soon as I hit both balls that she was going to score. She's really fast, strong, and smart on the bases. The whole team came together towards the end of the game. We passed the torch. We had confidence in Brandice. I was confident with everyone at bat. There was just a feeling that even though Lehigh is a great time, there was a feeling that we could do it."
Sortino looking ahead:
"This is the biggest game. Getting to the semifinals of a championship of a double elimination tournament. This is the big game because you get to Sunday. Getting to Sunday is what it's all about, giving yourselves a chance to win it. We're really thrilled for the opportunity tomorrow and what it brings to us. Our kids have worked really hard for it."
Lehigh Post-Game Quotes:
Coach Fran Troyan general statement:
"For us, this is really a big deal. To be totally candid, this is going to sound a little strange to all of you that follow intercollegiate athletics-- they call me a coach, but really what I'm in this for is the education and the learning process and growing process for my kids. Usually, it's a life changing event, like death or birth, or something like that where you are forced to grow up. Sometimes in the spirit of competition or heat of competition, if you can play as well as you possibly can play, you grow and there's no turning back. For us and for this young lady [Lisa Sweeney] that is what happened today. So there's no turning back for us. We're going to look to continue to get better and the expectations that we will permit ourselves and to place on ourselves are going to be even greater. Yesterday, the cards fell so that we won the game and we played exceptionally well. The last two days, we've had no defensive errors, and have just have battled and competed. From our stand point, I think that it's clear that we feel we belong here and we're going to do our best to try to come back in the next game and play fro a championship tomorrow.
Pitcher Lisa Sweeney on the whether the game is more physical or mental:
I would say more mental than physical. When you're playing such great competition, when you're able to play such great competition, you're pumped and your adrenaline can only pump for so long. I think mentally, there's more fatigue for everybody more than physically. I think in all of our minds we can go forever physically. If it were 18 innings, we would go for 18 innings. We just do the best we can for as many innings we play.
Lisa Sweeney on UMass pitcher Brandice Balschmiter:
You appreciate the other pitcher because you know what she's going through. She pitched a great game. It was a fight till the end. You have to take a step back in the game and realize how fortunate we are to be here, how fortunate we are to have the ability to play such a great team and face such a good pitcher because you can only get better from an expeience like this.
Coach Troyan on the current pitching situation:
Well, we had Kate Arico pitch yesterday and like any other team, we've gone back to back days all year long. Kate will come back and pitch and hopefully do a great job for us. Candidly, we thought that we had an opportunity here to win a ball game. We had an opportunity to win a ball game and we went with Lisa. Had we had a different game, we would have taken Lisa out and saved her a little bit. I think that anyone who witnessed that game realizes that Lehigh University has a very special young lady here pitching for us.
Coach Troyan on the play where the runner was thrown out at home:
We're taught to break on anything slow and she [KatherineWegert] hesitated a little bit. As it turned out, the ball was in between the first baseman and second. She got a little bit of a slow break. Had she broke on contact she probably would have been safe. We just felt that with the way Brandy was pitching that we needed to force them to make a play in that sort of situation. Even though her jump was late, I think that Katherine Wegert did the right thing in trying to score right there.
Lisa Sweeney on Julie Sterret's double to tie the game:
It's funny because Julie has done that countless times this season where we've been down and she is the go to girl in the perfect situation. She came through and our team is all behind her. She came out on top which was awesome. It did lift us up. We were fired up like it was a new ballgame, and it was. That was awesome, an awesome play in the game.