The first showers of spring have fallen over California State University Fullerton and with the arrival of gray skies and plummeting droplets of precipitation, the collegiate softball cycle has commenced on campus.
The Southern California climate, however, will be the least of CSUF softball head coach Kelly Ford’s worries, as the Titans look to repeat history and go for a fourth consecutive Big West conference championship this season.
The last time the Titans won four consecutive Big West conference championships was over a decade ago in sequential seasons spanning from 2000 to 2003 under former head coach Michelle Gromacki, who picked up only one other conference championship in her 13-year stint with the Titans.
Fortunately for Ford, a strong supporting cast of players is helping CSUF softball make a strong case for a fourth consecutive conference title this season.
The returning cast this year features six players who earned Big West All-Conference honors last season for the Titans.
Deshea Hill, Zoe Richard and Ari Williams received First Team selections, while Sophie Frost, Trish Parks and Julia Valenzuela were selected to the Second Team.
It goes without saying that many integral players on last season’s Big West championship team who were not presented with individual honors last season will also be making a return to Anderson Family Field for the team’s 2019 campaign.
Players like right-handed pitcher Taylor Dockins,who threw the team’s only no-hitter last season against against San Diego), and infielder Sam Kennedy, a defensive stalwart with a .952 field percentage last year, are representative of structurally indispensable players that can invariably aid the Titans in the long run.
Even with all the returning talent, the Titans had to fill eight roster vacancies after the end of the 2018 season.
Ten new faces were added to the roster over the offseason in an attempt to help bolster the deficiencies of last year’s roster losses. Six of those new 10 are classified as infield or outfield players.
This bodes well for the Titans since they desperately needed an influx of field players, as a large majority of the most recent CSUF softball alumnae patrolled much of Anderson Field before leaving the program.
Yet with the 2019 season set to take place this Thursday, with the Titans facing off against Idaho State at home in the Titan Classic, one might wonder how Ford is preparing to outdo herself this season.
For the past several years, Ford has set the Big West conference on fire: earning three consecutive Coach of the Year awards, three consecutive conference titles, altering a handful of school records and achieving 200 wins as the Titans head coach. In addition, Ford’s contract has been extended twice to ride out from now until 2024.
While it might seem like there are no glaring weaknesses that could cause the Titans to drop out of contention for the Big West title this season, there are some noticeable areas of deficiency in the Titan’s game, namely at the end of the season.
Over the three year span in which Ford took home successive Big West titles (2016 to 2018), each season has ended the same — the team falling to an opponent in NCAA regionals and failing to showcase a winning record for the Titans on a national stage.
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