In Elaine Sortino’s 26 seasons as the Massachusetts softball head coach, she has racked up 17 Atlantic 10 championships. She has made the other A-10 teams tremble, shiver and tremor. The Minutewomen have made winning championships look easy, and yesterday was no different.
The Maroon and White trounced Fordham 8-0.
Winning is like clockwork for Sortino’s team – score a few runs, throw a few pitches, do a little dance and go home. Heck, with the mercy rule in softball, UMass gets things done in time for lunch. This season, the Minutewomen have won contests in six innings or less 13 times.
And while statistics and history under Sortino’s supremacy show that winning an A-10 championship appears easy for the veteran coach, her team certainly does not see things that way.
Of course, last season during this time it was vintage UMass. Junior Jenna Busa and the Minutewomen made the A-10 championships look like a cake walk in the Bronx. They knocked off Saint Joseph’s, 10-1, in the opening contest, and then swept Fordham in a two-game series, outscoring the Rams by a margin of 15-2.
Busa threw every single pitch during that span. She faced 83 batters and allowed 16 hits and three runs. To say the least, the championship was more of a demonstration on how to crush opponents and turn them into dust. The demonstration of course was put on by Sortino, Busa and company.
The prior season in 2004, however, was a different story for the Minutewomen.
UMass rolled into the 2004 A-10 Tourney with a 33-13 record and had won 10 of their previous 11 contests. A 1-0 edge over Fordham in Game 1 of the championships made it a nine game winning streak for the Minutewomen. Not to mention that UMass was playing these games at the UMass Softball Complex – a place where they had not lost in 73 matchups. All paths seemed to lead to another plaque for Sortino’s office, and the coast appeared clear for the Minutewomen to sail into the NCAA tournament.
And then, the walls came tumbling down.
Just one day after barely beating Fordham, 1-0, UMass was shutout by Saint Joseph’s, 3-0. Hours later the Minutewomen were shocked again, this time by Temple, in a 4-3 loss. Their season was pretty much over, until they were given a surprise at-large bid into the NCAAs where they were eventually knocked out of contention by Michigan State.
This afternoon will mark a new chapter (for lack of a better word) in the A-10 UMass saga. The Minutewomen will face a Saint Bonaventure team that is looking for blood. The Bonnies came into this season’s tourney as the fourth team in the standings. Yesterday afternoon, Bonaventure stunned Charlotte – the top team going into the A-10 tournament.
So in hindsight, the big, bad UMass softball powerhouse should destroy the 23-20 Bonnies today. They should pound them – and then laugh about it over lunch. They should get championship number 18 this weekend.
It was just one week ago today that the Minutewomen last faced the Bonnies – they ousted UMass, 5-3, in Game 2 of a doubleheader. They shouldn’t have done that.
-Eric Athas is a Collegian columnist.
