Lady Indians Get Underway At National Tournament

By Clint Cox

The Chipola Lady Indians softball team left on Monday en route to St. George Utah for the NJCAA National Softball Tournament. Play is scheduled to begin on Thursday the 19th and run through Saturday the 22nd. The Lady Indians took a bus to New Orleans where they were scheduled to fly out of for the trip out west. Chipola will enter the tournament as the #2 seed and with a record of 47-11. They will attempt to capture their second national championship having won their first in 2007.

The Lady Indians begin play on Thursday with an opening round matchup against the #15 seed in Georgia Perimeter (28-13). That game is scheduled for 11:30 am central time. If the ladies can win that contest they would play again Thursday night at ­­­6 pm central time against the winner of Chattanooga State versus Odessa College. A loss in their opening round game would have them play the loser of Chattanooga versus Odessa at 3:30 pm.

Chipola, ranked #3 in the nation in the last poll dated 4/28/10, is coming off an impressive stretch of victories as they went 5-0 in the FCCAA State Softball Tournament three weeks ago. That included a 14-0 drubbing of the Miami Dade in the championship game. The Lady Sharks were ranked #2 in the nation. That 5-0 run in the state tournament upped them to 16-1 in their last 17 games. But one concern for Coach Belinda Hendrix is that the opening round game against Georgia Perimeter on the 19th will be the Lady Indians first live game in 18 days. “With so much time between winning the state tournament and playing in the national tournament, we’ve paced ourselves with practices,” said Chipola Coach Belinda Hendrix.  “We were able to fine tune some areas of game defensively and work with our hitters.”

The Lady Indians will be familiar with six of the sixteen teams in the tournament. They have played and beaten Chattanooga State and Miami Dade. They fell to Salt Lake (ranked #1 in the nation) and Yavapai (defending national champions) back in January in a season opening tournament in Nevada. They also have one run losses to Wallace State (Al) and Seminole State (OK) that occurred back in February and March.

All Chipola games can be heard live on the radio at WJAQ 100.9 FM. All games at the NJCAA National Tournament can be viewed on the internet at www.psblive.com.