North Carolina State University Athletics
TIM PEELER: Peaking at the right time
5/12/2005 12:00:00 AM | Softball
May 12, 2005
BY TIM PEELER
RALEIGH -- There was a point in last year's inaugural season, when the NC State softball team thought it was doing as well as a first-team program could possibly do.
It had won 11 straight games, the last of which was a 5-2 victory over North Carolina. That's when the program sort of hit a wall, losing 10 of its last 14 games, including the last six to end the season.
So, earlier this year, when the Wolfpack lost five in a row to Elon and Georgia Tech and fell into a tie for last place in the ACC, there was an oddly familiar feeling.
"There was a time, right after we played Georgia Tech, that we felt we weren't playing as well as we did last year," said sophomore pitcher Shaina Ervin.
Then there was a five-day break in the 70-game schedule that allowed the players and coaches to step back, relax and return to some fundamentals.
No one has been able to slow the Wolfpack down since.
Coach Lisa Navas and her team went to Virginia Tech and swept the Hokies, then took two from Coastal Carolina and three from Massachusetts. And, in a three-game series to end the regular season, the Wolfpack took two of three from North Carolina, wrapping up fourth place in the ACC standings.
So heading into this weekend's ACC Softball Tournament in College Park, Md., Navas' team has won nine of its last 10 games. The Wolfpack (40-23) opens play in the double-elimination tournament Thursday at 11 a.m. against North Carolina.
The coach doesn't necessarily see it as a miraculous turnaround. But the Wolfpack has been killing the ball at the plate, batting .316 in those 10 games. Sophomore Renee LaCroix got 10 hits in her first 12 at-bats after Navas moved her to leftfield, and freshman Lisa Nentwig played a solid first base. Sophomore catcher Miranda Ervin hit three home runs and drove in 12 runs.
And sophomore pitcher Abbie Sims has been practically perfect on the mound and at the plate. She is 6-0 with a 2.58 ERA and is hitting .429 with a home run and 12 RBI in the Wolfpack's last 10 games.
It's the perfect time of the year to be peaking, if that's what you want to call it. Navas doesn't.
"You can say peaking if you want, but to me, we are playing the way we are supposed to be playing," said Navas, who earlier this year notched her 400th career win. "I think we have been really having fun and playing hard and everybody is contributing. We put all aspects of our game together.
"The best thing that we have been doing is that here at the end of the year, we are playing well. Last year, we were so mentally drained, we didn't do anything."
Navas kept her team mentally prepared by showing the players videotape of some of the best teams in the country. There was a televised series between California and UCLA. There were some clips of players from Michigan and Arizona. It taught some of the young players on the Wolfpack roster an important lesson.
"They were talking about teamwork and how you don't have to have the picture perfect swing to get hits," Nentwig said. "Just us listening to them and watching, we realized that everyone makes mistakes. We realize that we can compete out there. It's all about the attitude."
But it has been 10 days - and a bunch of final exams - since the team's emotional 1-0 victory over the Tar Heels in the regular-season finale. Is there a danger that the Wolfpack has lost its edge? Or will it be well-rested to make a run at the ACC Tournament championship in just its second year? "There is no telling," Navas said. "It is still a learning process to find out what these kids are like and how they react to things. We know the ACC Tournament is extremely important for us, but we don't want to play with stress like we have to do something. We need to play with the loose attitude that we have had.
"Although I don't like taking 10 days off, we have to take finals. They are all here as students. Hopefully, they will be excited to be done with classes and will get excited to be out on the field again."
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
