Skip to main content
Happy Fourth of July to everyone!

In recent softball news, the USA team took first place at the Junior World Championships (19 and under) in Enschede, The Netherlands.

In line with this age limit, the American players appear to have been a mix largely of those who just completed their frosh year of college and those entering college this coming fall. Both through this USA Softball collection of player journals and the official USA roster at the tournament website, you can see who played for the Red, White, and Blue (the two lists are not identical).

Some of the familiar names from this past college season would include K'Lee Arredondo (Arizona), Tiffany Huff (Tennessee), Maggie Viefhaus (Michigan), and Megan Langenfeld (UCLA). As noted in the article linked to Langenfeld's name, an additional four players from the USA team will be joining the Bruins for this upcoming season.

Another member of the team was Brittany Lastrapes, an incoming player for the University of Arizona and the younger sister of Dominique Lastrapes, who recently finished her career at the University of Washington.

Popular posts from this blog

Few minutes after 6:00 pm Central: We now have our eighth team for the Women's College World Series, Oregon State (in the postings below, all WCWS qualifiers are depicted in bold). The Beavers defeated Cal 3-0 and then 1-0 today, to take the teams' super-regional series 2-1. 4:40 pm Central: We have the identities of two more teams going to the WCWS (bringing the total to seven), but Oregon State has stayed alive against Cal, forcing a third and deciding game to determine the one remaining team for the World Series. Leave it to the Beavers! Here are the two teams (in bold) that have earned bids to Oklahoma City thus far today: Tennessee , which edged Michigan 1-0 in what must have been a very dramatic finish to those who saw it live. The reason I say must have been is that ESPN cut away to show a live Barry Bonds at-bat in his quest for 715 home runs, a number that would surpass Babe Ruth for second on the all-time list. Sure enough, Bonds blasted one deep into the c...
Read more

2012 Geospatial Map of NCAA Tournament

Here is my annual geospatial map of the NCAA regional assignments. The official NCAA bracket is listed here . Each of the 16 regional sites has its own color code. For example, the geographically compact University of Florida region, hosted by the No. 5 seed Gators and also featuring Central Florida, South Florida, and Florida Gulf Coast, depicts the teams in blue boxes with orange letters. Two of the most spread-out regions are:  The one hosted by top-seed Cal, whose visitors include Arkansas, Iona (NY), and Boston University. These teams are shown in dark-blue boxes with yellow lettering. The University of Washington (No. 16 seed) region, whose participants (depicted in purple boxes with yellow letters) include Texas Tech, Maryland, and Harvard. Overall, the seedings are about what I had expected them to be (other years have presented greater surprises). Conference highlights (and lowlights) include: Of the nine Pac 12 schools that field softball teams, eight got in t...
Read more

2026 WCWS Championship Game 2

Top 1 (T1) Texas is the visitor tonight... Kayden Henry leading off... Line single to right, bringing up Katie Stewart, who has homered in her last four games and has 31 on the season... As ESPN announcers note, home-plate ump showing early signs of giving Canady the high strike... Stewart pop-up near home for first out... Viviana Martinez fouls out near third base, two down... Reese Atwood up... Henry steals second; throw goes into center, but Henry can't advance further... Atwood grounds back to Canady to end the half-inning... Bottom 1 (B1) Mia Williams grounds to third for first out... Mihyia Davis, who homered in the first last night, HBP... Lauren Allred up... K looking for two outs... Jackie Lis up... Davis steals second... Lis with hard, sinking liner to center, but Henry crouches down to snare it in the air... T2 Leighann Goode up for Texas... Grounds back to Canady for first out... Hannah Wells K swinging for second out... Kaiah Altmeyer ground to short for final out... B...
Read more