Kelly Jurden, Casey Martin grab major SCAC Softball awards
(Seguin) – In exclusive 2019 all-Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC) voting by the league’s head coaches, sophomore outfielder Kelly Jurden of Texas Lutheran University was selected the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference Softball Player of the Year, and teammate and freshman second baseman Casey Martin was named SCAC Newcomer of the Year.
Southwestern’s Lindsey Longuet picked up SCAC Pitcher of the Year honors, and Southwestern’s Angela Froboese was voted Coach of the Year.
Jurden made her second-straight appearance on the all-conference team after being named second-team as a freshman.
Jurden currently ranks in the top two of nearly statistical category heading into this weekend’s conference tournament. She is second in the SCAC in batting average (.453) and hit a league-best .485 in conference games. She is also first in on-base percentage (.535), first in walks (19), first in runs scored (44), second in hits (48) and first in the SCAC with 33 hits in league play.
Jurden also set a new SCAC and TLU marks for stolen bases in a single season with 44. She was the SCAC Offensive Player of the Week in Week 5 of the regular season when she hit .583 over four games and posted an on-base percentage of .706 with six stolen bases and five runs scored to lead the Bulldogs to a 3-1 series win over Southwestern.
Jurden is the sixth different Texas Lutheran student-athlete in the last six years to earn SCAC Player of the Year honors.
Jurden received four votes in the SCAC Player of the Year balloting, while junior utility Katie Bricarell of Southwestern University received the remaining three first-place votes.
Martin, a freshman second baseman from Pearland, Texas, is the third TLU student-athlete to win SCAC Newcomer-of-the-Year honors in the last four years. She ranks in the top five in a handful of statistics leading into the weekend’s conference tournament including first in batting average (.464), second in on-base percentage (.526), third in slugging percentage (.595) and tied for fourth in both stolen bases (20) and RBI (19) in SCAC play.
Defensively, Martin carries a .989 fielding percentage with just one error heading into tournament action. She was the SCAC Offensive Player of the Week in Week 9 when she hit .667 (8-for-12) with six runs scored, 10 RBI, three walks, six stolen bases and a pair of three-hit games in the Bulldogs’ four-game sweep of Austin College.
Martin received six votes in the balloting for SCAC Newcomer-of-the-Year. Freshman pitcher Hannah Scoggin of Centenary picked up the remaining vote.
In addition to the honors received by Jurden and Martin, both named to the All-SCAC First Team, the Bulldogs also put first baseman Madisyn Cates, third baseman Kassie Maddox, outfielder DeAnna Hernandez, utility player Chassety Raines, and pitcher Kayla Oliveira on the First Team.
Cates is hitting .416 with 26 RBI and seven doubles. Maddox is hitting .377 with 11 RBI, two home runs and 14 runs scored. Hernandez is hitting .364 with eight RBI and 25 runs scored.
Raines is hitting .382 with 13 RBI, and she is 7-0 in the circle with an ERA of 0.50. Oliveira is TLU’s wins leader, with 11. She is 11-3 with an ERA of 1.38.
Bulldogs on the All-SCAC Second Team include: catcher Erica Garcia and designated player Kali Chatham.
Honorable Mention selections for TLU were shortstop Cassie Roche and Skylar Ouellette
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SCAC Champion Bulldogs put seven players on All-Tournament Team
(Seguin) – Seven Texas Lutheran Softball players were named to the 2019 Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference Championship All-Tournament Team after the Bulldogs won their sixth consecutive conference tournament title on Sunday.
The Bulldog infielders – first baseman Madisyn Cates, Casey Martin, and Kassie Maddox – earned spots on the team.
In the outfield, SCAC Player of the Year Kelly Jurden was named to the All-Tournament team. She was joined on the squad by fellow outfielder Chassety Raines, who was named to the team as a utility player. Raines also pitched in the tournament and won the Bulldogs’ second game.
Kali Chatham received an All-Tournament spot as a designated player, and Kayla Oliveira grabbed all-tourney honors as a pitcher.
The Bulldogs went 3-0 in the 2019 conference championship. TLU defeated Schreiner 10-2 in five innings and Southwestern 10-2 in five innings before defeating Southwestern again, 5-0, in the championship final.
The Bulldogs improved to 30-7 overall after the three wins at the tournament. TLU is now 19-1 all-time in the SCAC Softball Championship.
The Bulldogs entered the SCAC tournament ranked No. 13 in the latest NFCA poll for NCAA Division III.
The Bulldogs are in the NCAA Division III Softball Championship for a sixth consecutive year and will learn their NCAA regional destination on Monday, May 6. A “watch party” in TLU’s Alumni Student Center is planned for noon that day.
The NCAA regionals start on May 10 and run to May 11.
Texas Lutheran’s Matthew Hickey named SCAC Pitcher of the Week
(Seguin) – Texas Lutheran freshman left-hander Matthew Hickey has been named the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference Baseball Pitcher of the Week.
Hickey picked up a save in Friday’s 9-7 win over Schreiner and then pitched a school record 10.1 innings of relief in the Bulldogs’ 21-inning loss to the Mountaineers on Saturday.
Hickey set a new school record for most innings pitched by a reliever, allowing just one run and scattering six hits.
Hickey came within two outs of tying Brian Wallace for the most innings pitched in a single game by a Bulldog. Wallace tossed 11 shutout innings in a 1-0 win over Schreiner in Kerrville in 2004.
In the series opener on Friday, Hickey ended the game by forcing a ground-out to first with two runners on and the potential game-winning run at the plate.
Hickey holds a 5-1 record with a save and a 2.17 ERA in his first year with the Bulldogs.
Hickey and the Bulldogs won two of three in the road series against Schreiner and secured the top seed for this weekend’s SCAC Baseball Championship in Cleburne, Texas. TLU won the SCAC Baseball regular-season co-championship and took the top seed by winning a conference three-game series against Trinity.
The Bulldogs open the SCAC tournament at 1 p.m. Friday against No. 4 seed Southwestern. The SCAC Baseball Championship is a four-team, double-elimination tournament played at The Depot in Cleburne. TLU is the defending champion.