As her University of Washington softball team prepared to return to the diamond for today’s first-round game of the Sportco Classic in Las Vegas, Huskies coach Heather Tarr still had yet to pick a starter late into this week.
What Tarr did know was that it would not be Danielle Lawrie.
The UW All-American workhorse has moved on, and now the Huskies will begin a spring without her.
“To have someone do what Danielle did, with basically all the weight on her shoulders, is pretty phenomenal,” Tarr said this week.
So who’s got next? Time will tell.
After Lawrie carried the team on her shoulders for much of the past two seasons — Tarr admits now that the team “literally threw games” during the 2009 national championship season by resting Lawrie’s arm and using another pitcher — the Huskies have no idea who their main starter will be.
Prized freshmen Kaitlin Inglesby and Whitney Jones are going to “get the ball equally” this season, Tarr said, while sophomore Baily Harris and junior Jenna Clifton should get some starts as well.
The Huskies are also waiting on freshman Bryana Walker to recover from injuries and join the mix.
“It’s cool because we haven’t had to do that, but we also haven’t gotten to that,” Tarr said of using multiple pitchers. “We’ll have to use a pitching staff, so it will be fun.”
Five pitchers are vying for the role of The One That Followed Lawrie, and Tarr freely admits that none of them is up for the task yet. She’s just hoping that one of them emerges as a workhorse over the course of the 2011 season.
“When you look at the history of our game, for the last 15 years, you see very few teams that have won national championships with two-pitcher staffs,” Tarr said. “In the end, usually one pitcher can be ridden.”
Without Lawrie, who took all her school records and consecutive national-player-of-the-year awards on to the professional level, the Huskies might have to rely on more offense this season. And they could have the firepower to do just that.
“We’ve got to be more offensive-minded than we have in the past,” said senior shortstop Jenn Salling, an All-America candidate who is one of seven returning position players from UW’s College World Series lineup last spring.
“That’s just the reality of the situation when you lose someone like Danielle.”
The absence of Lawrie is a bigger deal to what outfielder Niki Williams calls “outsiders” because the current players have already adjusted to her being gone. The Huskies played an entire fall season without her and have continued to practice through the academic year.
“It’s different not having her here, but she’s been gone long enough now that this is our team,” Williams said. “We know what we have to do. We’re obviously going to be a team that’s more in depth this year as far as the pitching circle goes. But all in all, it’s not anything different.
“People come and go, and you form new teams, and that’s what we’re going to have to do.”
While Lawrie is currently in Florida playing professional softball, she did stop by Seattle earlier this week for a pre-scheduled appearance. Tarr asked her to speak to the younger pitchers, and the UW alumnae happily agreed to do it.
During Lawrie’s time at UW, she carried the Huskies to two consecutive College World Series appearances while winning 83 games in a two-year span. Tarr isn’t expecting anyone to step into those cleats right away, but that doesn’t mean she’s writing off the season.
“At the end of the day, what we’ve defined over the last six years of Husky softball is hopefully going to ring true,” Tarr said. “You obviously need dominant pitching performances to win significant games, national championships and Pac-10 championships. … However we need to do it, we’re going to do it.”
The Huskies are setting their goals high despite the loss of their star player.
“Obviously,” Salling said, “we expect ourselves to win the national championship.”
The Huskies have reason for optimism. The team’s three top hitters from last season — Kimi Pohlman, Salling and Williams — are back from the 2010 team that went to the College World Series for the second consecutive year.
Third baseman Morgan Stuart believes UW has the firepower to get back again.
“Every year, we think we have a chance to go to the World Series, so that’s always our expectation,” she said. “We might not have been in the spotlight in terms of the national rankings five or six years ago, but now we’re on the radar.
“It’s always been an expectation of our program, and we know that.”
If the Huskies are going to get there, they’re going to have to do it without the best player — and, in terms of accolades, perhaps the best athlete — in school history.
“There’s definitely motivation for us to prove ourselves as a program and not be defined by one person,” Stuart said. “We’re very happy and very blessed to have had Danielle. But moving on, it’s about the program. That’s our definition of Husky softball, not just one player.”
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