Time to dust off the old blog and get some commentary going as the Linfield Wildcats softball team plunges into the NCAA Division III playoffs this week at Marshall, Texas.
The team arrived in this east Texas town of about 25,000 last night around 10 o’clock local time. That capped a 15-hour day of travel that began at the Keck Campus parking lot at 4:45 a.m. No worries for this program, which has seen its share of long trips over the years.
First thoughts: Wednesday is the day when the teams get acclimated to the area and softball facility. Each team will take an allotted two hours practicing on the game and warmup fields. A big band of thunderstorms is swirling right now over the top of Shreveport, about another 40 miles east. Those storms may through today’s schedule into a tizzy, we’ll see. Game forecasts for Thursday and Friday are calling for temps in the high 80s, so the Wildcats better shed their winter coats quick and get used to playing in the heat.
Great column by Randy Benson of the (Alexandria, La.) Town Talk. Randy covers Loiuisiana College’s softball program like a blanket and Randy had an excellent take on the muddled tournament schedule. The pairings after the first round of games are all dependent on how many teams remain, which presents about three possible scenarios. In Linfield’s case, that means the top-seeded ‘Cats will be in position to eliminate a team after the first day.
I will have a tournament preview, loaded with facts and figures, posted on the Linfield Athletics home page later this morning. Thanks to Linfield sophomore Eric Evenson for help putting the preview together on a short timeline.
For those who might be wondering, I do plan on doing live internet broadcasts of Linfield’s games. We’ll get all those details set up today, also.
