Zoe Lang/The Mossy Log
Looking ahead to a highly competitive spring season, Lewis & Clark Softball, which made the NCAA regionals last spring, provided insight into their preseason routine and training regimen.
Softball training starts in fall, typically containing heavier lifting aimed at preparing players for the competitive season in spring, when focus shifts to exercises to learn how to play together as a team.
Madison Scroggins ’26 brought attention to the difference between the fall and spring semesters.
“Lifting is a little bit lighter compared to fall, when we’re really heavy lifting, but we’re definitely doing a lot more team stuff in the spring and it’s a lot of communication work. Things that are more prepping us for actual game day, rather than in the fall. Just building up strength and learning to work together as a team,” Scroggins said. “Once we start playing games it gets really, really exciting and we’re going and going and going, because we play four games a weekend, and then postseason is kind of a lot more, just because it’s more pressure and more games because it’s usually tournament style.”
This year, softball will travel to Claremont, Calif. the weekend of Feb. 27, their first regular season game. The team has a second travel tournament to Atlanta, Ga. the weekend of March 13. Typically, the team only travels once per season.
“The reason we’re doing two trips is because we feel like we have a very competitive top 25 team in the country and we need to get out and play other top 25 teams,” Head Coach Shawna Cyrus said.
A major period of the year, the Northwest Conference Championships start in late March and last for approximately a month, preceding the postseason. In previous years, the team has placed second in Conferences, which they hope to achieve again.
Cyrus described the season progression from Conferences in April to the postseason.
“You have to win the regional to go to a super regional. If you win your super regional, you make it to the World Series, which is only eight teams. So that’s how the postseason looks,” Cyrus explained.
Following Conferences, the team may be selected to play postseason. An NCAA committee reviews teams’ strength of schedules and other factors from the season to determine which teams will be selected to play in the postseason.
The postseason begins in May after Conferences. If LC Softball is selected, they will continue to play during the championship after graduation.
Currently, the team is in the middle of the preseason, which is a time of excitement and preparation as training ramps up to get players as ready as possible for high-speed game conditions.
“As soon as we got back to school for the semester, we started working hard, practicing. We’re practicing almost every single day. We’re lifting, so strength and conditioning is twice a week, but we’re doing a lot of scrimmaging, so really game-like practices right now, trying to hit off of our live pitchers,” Cyrus said.
Softball has an exhibition game against Lower Columbia College on Feb. 22, which is unsanctioned.
“It’s a junior college, so it’s just to get our feet wet there … and get the jitters out and it doesn’t count. And then right off the bat, our first game is in southern California, so we’re playing two top 25 teams in southern California in our first weekend out,” Cyrus said.
Cyrus expressed confidence that the team will be very successful this year.
“We had the best season in program history last year. We made it to NCAA postseason, which we’d never done before. So we’re coming off of that from last year, sort of having an expectation to compete/win the conference this year, which we also have never done, and continue on to postseason again this year. Having a ton of returners feels like we should be in a really good place to pick up a lot of wins, be ranked in the top 25 and play postseason at the end,” she said.
Scroggins expressed a similar sentiment as Cyrus.
“College softball has gone amazingly for me and a lot of other my teammates. I think this season’s going to be really exciting,” Scroggins said. “Last year we went farther than any softball team from here (LC) has ever gone before. We made it to regionals, and so personally, I hope we can make it to super regionals this year, at least. We definitely want to win our conference tournament, which we haven’t done before, so (we want to) beat Linfield in that and then make it back to regionals again and hopefully go up further than we did last year.”
However, as with all sports, the team will have to work hard.
“I think our biggest challenge is probably going to be going up against some of these bigger teams like Linfield, who’s number three in the nation. We beat them before, and I think we for sure have a good chance, but that’s definitely going to be one of our harder opponents,” Scroggins said.
This year, the team has 10 seniors, 10 first-years, one sophomore and five juniors. Samantha Santa Ana ’29 described the experience of being a first-year player.
“I feel like this team was so, so welcoming, and the first couple weeks leading up to coming to school I was so scared. I was like, ‘gosh, I don’t know what my teammates are going to be like, I don’t know what school’s going to be like,’” Santa Ana said. “I feel like everyone welcomed us with really big opening arms, and I feel like the transition was pretty smooth and pretty easy, and I feel like I can talk to anyone on the team and it’s not a situation where I’m afraid of my upperclassmen and I feel really lucky and grateful to be a freshman in this class with these seniors and juniors and sophomore.”
Santa Ana also expressed the challenge of balancing school and sports.
“It’s a lot different from high school and travel ball because I’m practicing. I’m practicing almost as much as I am in class and spending time on homework, and so that balance is definitely more challenging. It’s something I’m still getting used to, but luckily, a lot of my teammates are in the same major or in the same classes as me. So we’re all there to help each other out,” she said.
As the start of the regular season approaches, the outlook is strong for the team, with the program showing remarkable progress in recent years.
“This is my 17th year here and when I started here, we would have multiple seasons where we didn’t win any games. And to see the program come from maybe the 350th team in the country, like, all the way on the bottom, to now we’re in the top 30 to 40 is pretty amazing. Our program has come a long way,” Cyrus said.
The team has been training hard to get back to regionals and further, especially as the team has 10 graduating seniors. The season is shaping up to be possibly the best in LC’s program history, and with two trips planned, there will be plenty of opportunities for the team to play against some of the best teams in the country.
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