Weekend Warriors

The 2009-2010 regular season for East Texas Baptist University's Athletics teams ended Sunday -- with softball still playing in the ASC playoffs this week, but other than that all regular season action for this school year is in the books.
The final weekend of the sports year here at ETBU came with some high drama as well as some outstanding, record-breaking type performances. Here is a short rundown of what transpired this last weekend for the Tigers:

• Baseball's Luke Leftwich had a monster series against Ozarks, bashing four home runs and driving in 11 as the Tigers finished the year by taking two of three games from an Eagles team that entered the series still fighting for a playoff spot. I'm no math major but that's almost 4 RBI a game for Luke, who finished his senior year with 13 bombs and tied for the team lead with a .431 batting average. The 13 homers ties the most by a Tiger in a single season since ETBU joined the American Southwest Conference back in 1998-99, matching Josiah Jones' mark during the Tigers' last playoff season in 2005.
• Senior Kyle Pope (see previous blog post) ended his brilliant ETBU career with 191 hits in three years -- finishing just nine short of the all-time hits record set by Trey Luster. Kyle matched his previous season high for hits with 66 and had 112 hits over the last two years. He also had at least one hit in 37 out of the 39 games played this season, which is an amazing statistic considering the amount of quality pitching in this conference.
• Softball, of course, kept alive its proud streak of 11 straight years of making the American Southwest Conference tournament, a tournament ETBU has never missed in its years of eligibility. For those who might not understand and appreciate tradition, that is a powerful streak for both the current Tigers and former ones, kind of a common bond throughout the years that they all share. Yes, it was a big deal.
• Lost in all the drama and excitement of fighting their way into the playoffs on the season's final day, perhaps, was the performance of ETBU's two pitchers in Sunday's action against top-ranked Louisiana College. I've watched Alicia Wright and Ayrika Henderson pitch the last two years but I don't know if I've seen as impressive a 1-2 punch performance as those two pulled off Sunday. Alicia threw a no-hitter last year as a freshman and had a couple of gutsy playoff performances, but I don't know if I've ever seen her throw as well as she did against LC Sunday. The Wildcats' only two hits of the game came on bunt singles, and nothing was hit especially hard at all. Just a great performance all around, but LC escaped with a 1-0 win by taking advantage of the bunts.
• Henderson got the ball in a must-win situation for ETBU and did what All-American aces do. It's been kind of a pitch to contact type thing for Ay this year, based on her lower strikeout totals, and she's still one of the top pitchers in this league. No one else could have had the ball in that situation, and she turned in a gem -- two-hitter, with one of those hits being a little bloop shot over her head that landed and spun away from Stacy Havner at shortstop. The second hit was a solid single to right, but it came after ETBU had exploded for a 6-0 lead in the fifth inning.
• Heard this from an LC follower in the ballpark Sunday: "No one outside of Marshall, Texas is going to be sad to see Adrienne Meier graduate," which was a full-hearted compliment of the Tigers' senior leftfielder. Consider this: against some of the top pitchers in this league in her last two home doubleheaders (UT Tyler and LC), Addy has nine hits in four games, a batting average of .600. That's certainly worthy of a two-time All-Region selection who most certainly will be in line for a third honor in that regard.
• And finally, freshman Beck Young's game-clinching three-run homer in the fifth inning Sunday gave her 42 RBI on the year. That's the most RBI by a Tiger freshman since Christy Shipley -- arguably one of the best players to ever wear a Tiger uniform as well as compete in the ASC -- had 50 on the record-setting 41-win team of 2004. Beck also made a nice diving stab defensively at second base. In a league that has been lit up this year by great freshman performances, Beck is right up there among that group.