Defending national champion Cardinals among
teams battling for NCAA Midwest Regional title

WINONA, Minn. — The Saint Mary’s University fastpitch softball team regained one title last weekend — now the Cardinals get a shot at holding on to two others.

For the fifth straight season, the Saint Mary’s University fastpitch softball team will be taking part in the NCAA Division III regional tournament.

The Cardinals, who earned a share of their fourth Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference title in the last five years with a pair of 9-0 victories over Bethel last Saturday, earned the No. 2 seed in the Midwest Regional, which will be held in Waverly, Iowa (home of No. 1 seed and host Wartburg College), beginning Friday afternoon.

SMU (31-6 overall) — which was a perfect 3-0 in claiming the Midwest Regional crown a year ago en route to its first-ever NCAA Division III national title — will face conference rival St. Thomas (33-7 overall) in its tournament opener.

The Cardinals and St. Thomas finished with identical 20-2 MIAC records, but SMU earned the conference’s automatic berth via the second tie-breaker criterion. Since the two teams split their head-to-head meetings (St. Thomas won 3-1, while SMU won 3-2), it came down to how the two teams fared vs. the third-place team in the conference, Gustavus. The Cardinals swept the Gusties (6-0 and 1-0), while the Tommies had to settle for a split (winning 8-0, then losing 1-0).

“I honestly think that anything short of a regional tournament berth would have been a real disappointment to this team,” admitted SMU first-year coach Nikki Fennern, who will square off against her predecessor — John Tschida — when the Tommies and Cardinals take the field on Friday. “Winning (a share of) the conference title is nice, and it’s a great accomplishment for this team, but we’ve still got a lot of work ahead of us.”

Especially considering the minefield that is the Midwest Regional.

Wartburg (34-7-1 overall) enters the tournament as the No. 1 seed, thanks in large part to its tournament-best 34 wins, while SMU and St. Thomas are no slouches, either, boasting 31 and 33 wins, respectively. It is the fifth straight regional tournament appearance for both teams, the longest such record among the five tournament teams. UW-Stevens Point (25-11), Wisconsin Intercollegiate Athletic Conference tournament champions and winners of 12 of its last 13 games, holds down the No. 4 seed, while Marian (21-13), the MCC tournament champion, rounds out the field as the No. 5 seed.

“I was a little surprised at the seeding,” admitted Fennern, whose team has held the No. 1 ranking in the USA Today/NFCA national top 25 since the season began. “I thought we might land the No. 1 seed, but at this stage it doesn’t really matter who’s the No. 1 seed and who’s the No. 5 seed — all that matters is who wins the tournament.”

Which is exactly what the Cardinals expect to do.

“This team has been so focused all year,” said Fennern, whose team closed out the regular season winning three straight and 25 of its last 26. “When you are the defending national champions, you face a tremendous amount of pressure every time you step on the field. Everyone sets their sights on knocking you off, so you can never afford to take a day off — we’ve had to be at our best every single day.”

Not that that’s been a difficult task for the Cardinals.

“We won’t approach these games any differently than we’ve approached any of our previous games,” said Fennern, whose team enters regional play boasting a .335 batting average — led by Jill Hocking’s (Apple Valley, Minn.) .439 — and a team ERA of 0.98. “Every game is like a job to this team — and they just go out and do what they have to do to get the job done. When we beat Bethel to clinch the conference title, there wasn’t any big celebration — they knew what they had accomplished, but they also knew what still lies ahead for them.”

Just another day at the office.