Two Iowa teams are set to leave for the opening round of the NAIA softball tournament. Morningside will take part in the opening round hosted by Rogers State University in Oklahoma. The Mustangs are 31-14 and came out of the losers bracket to win a fourth straight Great Plains Athletic Conference tournament title.
Coach Jessica Sitzmann says they played well after a day off for bad weather. Morningside averaged just over 11 runs in winning its final three game of the tournament. On the season the Mustangs are hitting .322 as a team and average just over six runs per game.
“They worked hard for that in the winter and the offseason preparing for the season, and it’s through the order, we had different kids stepping up at different times,” Stizmann says. Morningside will play the top seed, Williams Baptist College, in Monday afternoon’s opening round.
Stitzmann says it’s a double-elimination tournament and they need to focus on playing conistently. Grand View heads to an opening round tournament in Columbia, Kentucky. The Vikings overcame a slow start to the season and advanced by winning the Midwest Collegiate Conference tournament this past weekend.
Grand View coach Lou Yacanich junior says they have been playing well in the last month all the way through the team. He says his team never lost confidence despite a brutal early schedule that featured a 1-12 start to the season.
He says they played number 5, 7 and 10 in the rankings and hoped the schedule would pay off in the end and they were able to see all their problems and pull it together with great chemistry.
Grand View will take on top seeded Auburn-Montgomery in Monday’s opening round as the number four seed in their bracket.