In college athletics, freshmen enter their respective programs with a certain chip on their shoulders. They come straight out of high school with something to prove — that they can make significant contributions early and often.
Looking at the Oregon softball team in recent years, true freshmen have played crucial roles in the team’s overall success. Most of the time they come in carefree, ready to take on whatever comes their way, and they generally have a lot of individual success with that mental and physical approach.
But if you look a little closer to those talented freshmen who crack the starting lineup at 18 or 19 years old, duplicating that same success a second year in a row can be, well, difficult to say the least.
Let’s wind the clock back to last May when the Ducks’ season ended. The team lost two games at Missouri in the Super Regional round, which would have punched their first-ever ticket to College World Series, but was an extremely impressive year all things considered.
For the 2010 season, then-freshmen Allie Burger and Sam Pappas combined to lead the team in batting average, at-bats, runs scored, hits (by a long shot), home runs, RBI, walks and stolen bases. Yeah, that’s some serious damage for a couple of first-timers.
Fellow freshman Kaylan Howard had the second-highest home run total (9), behind only Pappas (11), while the fourth freshman of the group, Jessica Moore, paced Oregon in the pitching circle with 16 wins, 14 complete games, 238 strikeouts against 66 walks, in 192 innings of work.
Now back to 2011.
Burger, who led the Ducks with a .387 season average a year ago, has fallen to seventh this season at .291. Howard comes in eighth at .286, while Pappas is 11th at .272, and the only offensive category the trio leads the team in is home runs — Pappas has a team-high seven.
Credit where credit is due: Moore already holds a 15-6 record with nine complete games and 138 strikeouts against 62 walks. She’s still doing her thing.
From a physical standpoint, the three offensive threats seem to be just as healthy, if not stronger, than a year ago. Is it complacency that’s led to the downturn in numbers? Given the practices I’ve seen, I know that not to be true.
That leaves us with what many call the Sophomore Slump. I’ll let senior lefty Brittany Rumfelt explain…
“Coming in freshman year you just have that feeling of you know what you’re doing, and you just go out and play ball,” Rumfelt said before practice on Tuesday. “At this level you start thinking more in-depth of the game; your IQ of the game goes up. So you start thinking more, which is, I think, where the sophomore slump comes from, really.”
Going strictly off the numbers, the trio has hit that portion of their career in full effect this season. Their defensive presence hasn’t wavered, even with Burger and Pappas seeing time at centerfield after the graduation of Neena Bryant.
And yet, in their place, new freshmen have emerged to help Oregon stay at a high level.
Freshman third baseman Courtney Ceo has taken over Burger’s slot at the leadoff position, and she ranks second with a .405 batting average, while leading the team in at-bats, runs scored and hits through 41 games.
Alexa Peterson has a stranglehold on the starting catcher’s spot (though she’s only hitting .273), while Kailee Cuico has been used in a variety of roles, most notably as a designated player to bat for Moore.
Second-year head coach Mike White believes it’s always easier to go up than it is to go down, and that’s been the case with the 2010 freshmen class.
“You go out there with a fresh open mind, and you just go for it,” White said. “Sometimes when you go back that second year you start over thinking things a little bit. We’re seeing that with the returning sophomores.”
The more they over-think, the more complicated the simple things become, and the downward cycle appears inevitable. But after all, it’s called a slump, not a career-ender. And if you’ve seen that trio play at the level they’re capable, you’ll believe me when I say things will come around.
Just keep it simple.
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