GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— The defending champions. The preseason favorites. An interesting recipe for what could be a very impactful and exciting out-of-the-gates Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference softball series.
After nearly a full calendar year without playing, the Colorado Mesa University Mavericks will tangle with the MSU Denver Roadrunners in a 4-game set at the Regency Athletic Complex in Denver on Sunday and Monday in what will be the opening series of the 2021 season for both teams. The series was originally scheduled for Saturday and Sunday but was pushed back a day to recent snow in state's capital city.
Doubleheaders are now slated to begin at noon on Sunday and 11 a.m. on Monday and can be streamed via the RMAC Network. Live stats can also be accessed here and Maverick fans are encouraged to follow the Mavericks' twitter account (@colomesasb) for in-game updates and fun behind the scenes content.
Fans will not be permitted to attend due to COVID-19 protocols in Denver but are expected to be allowed on a reduced-capacity basis for CMU's home-opening series on Mar. 5-6 against the Colorado School of Mines. Details will be announced next week.
Defending Champions
The Mavericks will enter the 2021 season as the 4-time defending RMAC Regular Season Champions having won the 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 titles. They were also 10-2 and tied for the lead with Colorado Christian and MSU Denver in the 2020 RMAC standings when the remainder of last year's season was canceled by the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of that, no official championship was awarded, meaning the Mavericks enter 2021 as the "queens of the castle".
The Mavericks last played on Mar. 8, 2020 and will have gone 357 days since last playing when they take the field on Sunday.
The Mavericks, who went 16-6 overall in 2020, have won 11 RMAC Championships in their program history, including in five of the last six years.
Polling Third
Despite the Mavs' recent success, they were picked third in what was one of the tightest RMAC Preseason Coaches' Polls in conference history. This week's opponent –MSU Denver— was picked first in the poll with 113 points while Colorado Christian was tabbed second with 110 points. The Mavericks received 108 total points. All three teams split the 12 first place votes evenly, garnering four a piece after each finished 2020 with 10-2 RMAC records.
Poll procedures called for each of the league's 12 head coaches to rank their opposition 1-11 without voting for their own squad. Eleven points were awarded for a first place vote with ten going for a second place vote and so on.
MSU Denver has been and is listed in the others receiving votes category of the NFCA Division II Coaches Poll, released for the third time of the regular season on Wednesday.
Players to Watch
Additionally, institutions selected RMAC Preseason Players to Watch, which were announced in conjunction with the poll. The Mavericks selected redshirt senior utility player
Brooke Doumer, redshirt redshirt sophomore pitcher
Shea Mauser and redshirt sophomore outfielder
Lauren Wedman.
Doumer was a First Team All-RMAC and Second Team All-South Central Region selection in 2019 and finished second behind Wedman in batting average last season with her .420 mark. She also scored 22 runs and stole a team-high eight bases while slugging at a .56 5 clip with four doubles, two home runs and 13 RBIs.
Mauser made 14 appearances in the circle including 10 starts as the Mavs' No. 1 pitcher in 2020. She went 8-2 with a 2.03 ERA, which was the second best mark in the conference. She was also third in the RMAC for wins and completed seven games while tossing 69 innings. She also was named as the RMAC Pitcher of the Week on Feb. 18, 2020 after going 2-1 with a 0.59 ERA during the previous weekend's Cactus Classic.
Wedman was having a tremendous 2020 season when it was cut short. She hit .458 to lead the Mavericks and finish third in the RMAC statistics and was on a 10-game hitting streak while reaching safely in 16 consecutive games. She was also perfect defensively after earning Honorable Mention All-RMAC honors as a true freshman in 2019, when she made 47 appearances and 31 starts while hitting .349 at the plate.
Top Pitching Staff
With three of the lowest five ERAs in the conference last year, the Mavericks lead the RMAC in team ERA at 2.38. CMU also lead the RMAC in opponent batting average at .241 and WHIP (Walks + Hits per Inning Pitched) at 1.26.
Individually, Mauser finished second in the RMAC with her 2.03 ERA.
Ellie Smith was third 2.31 while
Paige Adair was fifth at 2.84. Adair also led the RMAC in opponent batting average at .189.
All three Maverick pitches are back for 2021.
Defense wins Championships
The Mavericks also led the RMAC in fielding percentage in 2020 with a .972 team mark, which ranked the Mavs 20
th nationally out of 284 teams.
The Mavericks also led the RMAC in 2019 with the same .972 team fielding percentage and have led the RMAC in each of the last four years since and including 2017.
We Can Still Hit
The Mavericks were a little more reliant on their pitching and defense in 2020 than the previous few seasons, but still put up some good offensive numbers, finishing last season ranked in the nation's top 25 for batting average (22
nd, .337), on-base percentage (23
rd, .415) and slugging percentage (19
th, .516) while scoring 6.45 runs per game to rank 36
th nationally and third in the RMAC.
In 2019, the Mavericks won their second straight NCAA Division II national statistical title for scoring offense in 2019 putting up nearly eight runs (7.98) per game after scoring 508 runs in 2018 to average 9.58 per game. The 2018 mark was a RMAC record and was the most runs scored by a collegiate softball team in the country (all divisions) that year.
In 2019, the Mavericks also finished second in the country for slugging percentage (.582) and third for on-base percentage (.442).
In 2018, the Mavericks also won Division II team statistical titles for batting average (.398) and doubles per game (2.55) while setting RMAC records for those categories as well as RBIs (442) and total hits (609).
In 2021, the Mavericks return each of their top two and three of their top four hitters based on batting average including Wedman and Doumer, who both hit over .400 to rank in the RMAC's top 10 last year.
Camryn Mullen, who hit .377 in her true freshman 2020 season also returns for her second and now redshirt freshman season. Although the Mavericks will have to replace the offensive pop of players such as
AnnMarie Torres, a 3-time all-American and
Hailey Hinson, both of whom graduated in 2020 and chose not to use an NCAA eligibility extension waiver that would have allowed them to come back for a fifth season this year.
Doumer, now a redshirt senior, chose to use that waiver and is back for her fifth season of collegiate softball, including her third at CMU.
Late D-1 Pickup Returns Home
In November, the Mavericks announced that Grand Junction native and Fruita Monument High School product
Brandi Haller committed to transfer to CMU from Division I Northern Colorado, where she played in 22 games last year after spending her 2019 freshman season at Midland Junior College in Midland, Texas, where she hit .375 while slugging at a .575 clip in 50 games. Haller, a utility player who will have up to three seasons of eligibility at CMU, was a 3-time first team all-conference honoree while in high school.
Freshman faces
The Mavericks also have three true freshman on the 2021 roster in shortstop and catcher
Ally Distler of Littleton, Colorado and Columbine High School, and infielders
Bryerly Avina and
Ava Fugate. Avina hails from Tooele, Utah while Fugate joins the Mavericks from Chehails, Washington and W.F. West High School.
Conference Only Schedule
The Mavericks will play a conference-only schedule this year playing 40 games over the next ten weekends. Half (20) of those games are slated to be at home at the CMU Softball Stadium, including next weekend's (Mar. 6-7) home-opening series against the Colorado School of Mines.
The Mavericks will also play host to Adams State (Mar. 20-21), New Mexico Highlands (Apr. 2-3), UCCS (Apr. 17-18) and Colorado Christian (Apr. 24-25) while making trips to Fort Lewis (Mar. 13-14), Regis (Mar. 27-28), Black Hills State (Apr. 10-11) and Chadron State (Apr. 30-May 1).
The regular season champion will have the right to host the RMAC Tournament, currently slated to begin May 6 although conference administrators have been discussing moving that back a week now that the NCAA has altered the NCAA Tournament format and dates.
A different road to Denver
Due to effects of the COVID pandemic, the NCAA has reduced the size of the NCAA Tournament from 64 to 48 teams, which means that each of the eight regional tournaments will only include six teams this year, instead of the normal eight. Additionally, the Super Regional weekend has been eliminated and each regional will be contested with six teams at one site instead of the normal format of two teams hosting separate 4-team regionals before the winners meet in a best-of-3 super regional.
The eight regional champions will then head to Denver for the NCAA Division II Championship, which will be held from at MSU Denver's Regency Athletic Complex, site of this weekend's series, from May 27-31.
The 12 RMAC and 16 Lone Star Conference teams currently make up the South Central Region.
Thirteen of the LSC teams have already played up to 11 games with conference play set to begin on Mar. 5. Eight RMAC teams have also played non-conference games heading into this weekend's conference slate.
However, the NCAA recently made a very unusual change in men's and women's basketball moving the RMAC to West Region for one year only to help balance the numbers of institutions that were playing during the pandemic-effected winter sports season. No such announcement has been made for softball nor other spring sports to date, although the CCAA, which includes 11 softball teams in the West Region, announced on Dec. 3 that they would not have a 2021 conference season.
The other West Region conferences are the Great Northwest Athletic Conference and the Pacific West Conference.
The GNAC announced on Feb. 18 that they plan to conduct a full softball season with six of the league's normal seven softball teams. Simon Fraser, will not participate due to the continued closure of the U.S./Canada border. The PacWest also has plans to play a modified softball season in three regional pods as they have done for basketball.
About the Roadrunners
The Roadrunners finished the shortened 2020 season with a 18-6 overall record and were tied with the Mavericks and Colorado Christian atop the RMAC standings at 10-2.
They went 31-27 overall and 23-13 in RMAC play in 2019 and were the fifth seed for that year's RMAC Tournament in Grand Junction, where they ended up third.
They have tried three times to get the season underway but have doubleheaders with Northern Colorado and Montana State-Billings canceled by COVID issues. They also had a scrimmage with Mines thwarted.
The Roadrunners named pitcher/shortstop Darby McGhee and outfielders Megan Sansburn and Rebecca Gonzales as their RMAC Players to Watch.
McGhee was a First Team All-RMAC selection in both 2018 and 2019 and was an all-region selection in the latter. She is the school's all-time leader in strikeouts (352) and is tied for tenth in the program history for doubles as a hitter with 34.
Sansburn ranks eighth in program history for stolen bases (30) and led the RMAC with 31 runs scored last year after sharing the RMAC lead with 17 walks last year.
Gonzales was the 2019 RMAC Freshman of the Year and carries a .378 career batting average into the season. She was second in the RMAC last year for on-base percentage at .537, amongst other impressive numbers.
Annie Van Wetzinga is in her eighth year as the Roadrunners' head coach and is the program's all-time coaching wins leader with 229 (229-128). She has led them to three NCAA Tournaments (2014-16), two RMAC Tournament Championships (2014, 2016) and the 2015 RMAC Regular Season title, the only one in the last six completed seasons the Mavericks have not won.
Series History
The Mavericks and Roadrunners did not get to play each other in 2020 although the Mavericks have won each of the last eight games between the teams dating back to 2017. The Mavs swept a 4-game series in Denver in 2019 and won both meetings in 2018, including an RMAC Tournament win at home and an early season non-conference tournament victory in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.
The Mavs also won both games of a non-conference series in February, 2017.
Before this recent stretch, the Roadrunners had won nine consecutive games in the series and lead it 25-15 since resuming their program in 2008 after an 18-year hiatus.
Up Next
The Mavericks will host the Colorado School of Mines in their home-opening series on Saturday, Mar. 6 and Sunday, Mar. 7. Doubleheaders will begin at noon (Saturday) and 11 a.m. (Sunday) that weekend. Mines is currently 1-3 overall and begins RMAC play with a home series against CSU Pueblo, which has also been pushed back a day to this Sunday and Monday.
