Someday they will

Hoping to do for Night Ranger what some Arizona DJ did for Sheriff in 1988. (GOOGLE IT everyone except @NUHF!)

I am not paid good money to come up with words at times like this. But I am, contrary to what you might think reading my Twitter feed, just about speechless.

Several hours after coming agonizingly close to what would have been, by far, the biggest victory in the history of Hofstra athletics, I have no idea how to put the Flying Dutchwomen's flirtation with a berth in the Women's College World Series, and the pair of 2-1 Super Regional losses to South Florida Saturday that ended their season, into proper context.

Part of me wishes I could just give this the who-what-when-where-and-how wire service treatment and be done with it. But something that stings this much, and made Hofstra fans care so much, deserves more than straight wire copy.

In particular, the five Ws would do a disservice to the Flying Dutchwomen, who were so close to flinging their gloves skyward that we could taste the celebratory Tweets and feel the cotton of our College World Series T-shirts, and to the mercilessly cruel twists of fate that have them flying home this morning instead of boarding a flight to Oklahoma City.

A team that was as close to perfect as possible heading into the Super Regional—the Dutchwomen won 37 of 38 games in the 45 days leading up to Saturday—and needed to win just one more game to make the World Series instead saw its season conclude with two one-run losses in a span of six hours.

The Dutchwomen left an average of seven runners on base in 54 games prior to this weekend but stranded 31 in three games in Tampa. They left 11 on in Saturday's first game, when the Dutchwomen had the go-ahead run in scoring position five times, including one runner at third, in the first eight innings and had the winning run at second with one out in the eighth. After South Florida scored twice in the top of the ninth, the Dutchwomen twice loaded the bases in the bottom of the inning.

"If we could have gotten one key hit…" Dutchwomen coach Bill Edwards told reporters at the postgame press conference. "We were leaving runners at second and third, bases loaded, time and time again. It's obviously a credit to the pitching, but we've been here before and it's amazing how you get on a run and you win so many games because you're getting those key hits.

"And all of a sudden you get in a situation where we had the same opportunity today in both games that we've had in the last 40 games of the year. And it's amazing how this game—how we really have no control over the game."

It's also amazingly cruel that the one person who controlled Hofstra's fate, and did more than anyone could have possibly asked in order to get the Dutchwomen into the World Series, was the one who not only took both losses but made the final out in each game.

In 19 years of following Hofstra athletics, I have never seen an individual performance as gallant, inspiring and noble as Olivia Galati's effort Friday and Saturday. To simply write Galati threw all 27 innings this weekend doesn't do her justice. She threw all 11 innings of the longest Super Regional game ever Friday night, then another nine in Saturday's opener, then all seven in the elimination game that started 30 minutes after the conclusion of the first game.

Most of us will never comprehend nor know how tired Galati had to be out there as the sun beat down on her Saturday, yet her facial expression never changed as the pitcher Edwards calls the Dutchwomen's version of Secretariat willed her way through 328 pitches over 25 hours.

I am loathe to use the word heroic in the sporting context, but Galati this weekend came as close as anyone will ever come to deserving that adjective. It was an honor just to watch it, for those of us at home as well as in the Hofstra dugout: Edwards called it Galati's performance the greatest he'd ever seen in 44 years of coaching.

"Tops. Top," he said. "Championship games in hockey, football, softball. Tops, right here to my left. Number one."

If life was fair, instead of unnecessarily cruel, there would be four more days of wondering how far Galati could carry the Dutchwomen and marveling at how Edwards got the CWS trip he so richly deserves. Now we must wonder if the Dutchwomen will ever get this close again.

The last time the Dutchwomen were within one win of the College World Series was 2004. Long time ago. Galati is back next year for her senior season, which means the Dutchwomen will be very, very, very good once again, but the NCAA Tournament is a crapshoot. A run at the College World Series is as much about a draw as it is talent.

And as always, at some point, the advantages Everyone Else has are too much to overcome. But couldn't they have been too much to overcome later this week instead of yesterday, when South Florida was able to swap out pitchers Sara Nevins and Lindsay Richardson and utilize pinch-runners and benefit from the stellar defensive play of LSU transfer Jessica Mouse?

It is easy to lapse into what-if mode at moments like this, and kind of cathartic to do so. But it would not be fair, to either us or the Dutchwomen, to let sadness and disappointment overshadow what was derived from the run to the edge of the College World Series.

The softball team gave Hofstra 15 well-deserved minutes of fame. After the Dutchwomen were the subject of features in all the local papers as well as some national outlets in the days leading up to the Super Regional, New York sportswriters Steve Serby and Peter Botte and New York Giants PR man Pat Hanlon Tweeted about the three games.

"I told the team 'We gave Hofstra University more press in two weeks than they're going to get in the presidential debate, which is probably going to last a month,'" Edwards said. "But that's what athletics can do. And that's how proud I am of these kids and how far they've taken this program."

The poor people who follow me on Twitter now know all about Flying Dutchwomen softball (262 softball Tweets the last two days, give or take 5,000, will do that) and have hopefully boarded the bandwagon. We know of at least one new fan: The daughter of loyal reader and very good friend @NUHF declared Hofstra her favorite softball team because her Dad's alma mater, Northeastern, doesn't offer the sport.

And the flurry of text messages I sent and received after the second loss reminded me, once again, of how good we have it as Hofstra fans and how we make up for with our passion what we lack in numbers:

"I'm in tears."

"Never more proud to be a Flying Dutchman."

"I can't leave my laptop—still trying to get closure on Facebook, watching press conferences, etc. Once I shut down laptop, it's all over."

"Sometimes this game is unbelievably wonderful to us," Edwards said. "And days like today, it's cruel."

For now this joins the litany of near-misses that keep us all awake at night, from those we recall vividly over the past two decades to those that happened when we were barely out of diapers, such as the Flying Dutchmen basketball team's narrow losses to Notre Dame and UConn in consecutive NCAA Tournaments in 1976 and 1977, or those that happened when we couldn't have identified Hofstra on a map, such as when the football team saw its unbeaten season end in the Division III semifinals in 1990.

Someday, if my wife and I have done our job as parents, our unborn child will carry the burden of yesterday as his or her own. It is part of the collective experience, from newborn to ninety, that bonds Hofstra fans, allows us to absorb the stings of these crushing near-misses and unites us in the belief that someday, the result will be different.

Yesterday wasn't our day. But someday it'll be a Hofstra team flinging gloves or basketballs or lacrosse sticks skyward after slaying Goliath on the national stage.

Someday they will. Someday we will.

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com or follow Defiantly Dutch at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch.

Edwards sets the standard for Hofstra softball

At first listen, Flying Dutchwomen softball coach Bill Edwards is the most vanilla of speakers, someone who talks about staying in a routine and taking everything one day at a time and not getting too high or too low.

But Edwards' words are a lot more than just recitations from someone who has read The Great Book Of Sports Cliches. They are words of experience from someone who has spent five decades in coaching and has modified his approach the last 23 years so that it is decidedly different than the one he used as a football and hockey coach earlier in his career.

It has been a wildly successful approach: The Flying Dutchwomen begin play in their 13th NCAA Tournament under Edwards—all since 1993—tonight at UCLA when they play the host Bruins.

"I've had to adjust to softball, which was different than when I coached football and different when I coached some hockey," Edwards said this week. "Coaching those sports, you needed the energy, you needed a fire, you needed the competitive spirit. You needed them to get a little bit excited—overly excited, because they're all contact sports and you want to do the things that you have to do to be successful in those sports.

"In our game, we have to relax. We have to be in the same tenor, the same feeling of confidence, the same mode in order to perform. We can't get too high because then we start throwing the ball away. We can't get excited because then we overrun a groundball. We can't get excited because then we start swinging at pitches outside the zone. So just keep everything the same, keep them relaxed, keep them focused now hat they have to do as individual student-athletes."

Edwards' words are also those of someone who manages to create chemistry by getting everyone to, quite literally, check their egos at the door. The all-day rains Tuesday forced the Dutchwomen to practice in the bubble near the tennis courts, and after practice, Edwards went ahead of his players and opened the door to the Physical Fitness Center. He held the door open as pairs of teammates walked through toting equipment.

The players were pictures of symmetry, with the first person to walk through the door silently stepping to the right as the person behind her took control and guided the equipment and her teammate through the other set of doors and into the PFC's gym.

"They're not afraid to get their hands dirty," Edwards said. "They're not afraid to pick up screens. They're not afraid to carry stuff. They're very receptive to the things we ask them to do. No one ever rolls their eyes. It's just the way Hofstra softball is. And it's the kind of kid that we recruit: Hard-working, put a light on the miner hat, bring your lunch bucket to work. That’s everything that we want our kids to be."

Most impressively, Edwards gets the Dutchwomen to focus on the tiniest and most immediate of objectives, yet also understands how important it is to current players to measure up to their predecessors at Hofstra.

This year marked the 21st straight season in which the Dutchwomen won either the regular season championship or conference tournament and the 13^th time in the last 15 years they won the tournament. The Dutchwomen didn't win the conference tournament in 2009, which they responded to in 2010 by winning 21 of 23 CAA games (including the tournament) and nearly forcing an elimination game against Arizona in a regional.

The Dutchwomen were upset by Georgia State in last year's CAA tournament. The reaction: Hofstra enters the NCAA Tournament an absurd 34-1 in its last 35 games. The Dutchwomen have won 17 in a row and just completed a perfect CAA season in which they won all 21 regular season games before sweeping three tournament games last week at Hofstra Softball Stadium.

So rest assured these Dutchwomen know the opportunity they have beginning tonight. A College World Series is the one thing missing from Edwards' resume, but the Dutchwomen have a legitimate shot at history thanks to record-breaking ace Olivia Galati (30-5, 0.90 ERA, a 331/22 strikeout-to-walk ratio) and their potent offense (.301 team batting average).

"I think this team really wanted to—and I don't like this word—revenge [for] last year," Edwards said. "I don't like that word, because I don't think it has a place in our athletics, but they really wanted it. They want to establish their identity. The seniors wanted to have their banner on the wall. They know the tradition of our program. They don't like to have the tradition taken from us.

"So I think they were very much aware of what they had to do in order to get it done."

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com or follow Defiantly Dutch at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch.

The secret to success is simple for Edwards and Hofstra softball

Bill Edwards might borrow part of his coaching philosophy from Jim Morris, the real-life inspiration for The Rookie as played by Dennis Quaid, but he's plenty experienced when it comes to winning championships.

All it takes is 30 seconds with Flying Dutchwomen softball coach Bill Edwards to realize he’s not kidding when he declares he has tunnel vision.

“We really haven’t talked much about anything from last year to this year,” Edwards said Monday in response to a question about whether or not the Dutchwomen used last season—when Hofstra’s streak of 11 straight conference championships and six consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances was snapped—as motivation this season. “I know they have. It was like the first week, we said ‘Let’s see if we can…’”

Edwards paused. “I forget the word that we used.”

Then he looked towards the bullpen. “Hey what was the word that we used early on?”

“What word?” sophomore catcher Courtney Crews said. “Kick butt? Awesome?”

“No,” Edwards said. “Regroup or reclaim or what was…”

“Re-establish,” piped up another player who was walking out of Hofstra Softball Stadium.

“Re-establish,” Edwards repeated. “We just mentioned it once.”

Once turned out to be more than enough for the Dutchwomen, who returned to the top of the CAA in resounding fashion. Hofstra, which lost six starters from last year’s team—including three-time CAA Pitcher of the Year Kayleigh Lotti—opened the season on an eight-game winning streak and won its first 11 conference games on its way to an 18-2 CAA finish.

The Dutchwomen mounted a dramatic seventh inning comeback—capped by Jess Hirschbuhl’s game-winning grand slam—against Towson in the first game of the CAA Tournament last week and outscored James Madison and Georgia State 11-1 in winning the final two games and the automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. Freshman pitcher Olivia Galati threw a no-hitter in the title game win over Georgia State, the first no-hitter in the history of the CAA Tournament.

The Dutchwomen did all this with four freshmen or sophomores in the everyday lineup as well as a sophomore, Erin Wade, as the no. 2 pitcher behind Galati. “All of our young players bought into what the seniors were selling, bought into what the coaching philosophy is and what Hofstra’s softball philosophy is,” Edwards said. “So when you have everyone buying into the same thing and everybody working toward that common goal of re-establishing ourselves, it was great.”

The Dutchwomen begin play in the NCAA Tournament tonight at the University of Arizona, where they take on Oklahoma State at 7 p.m. in the first game of the double-elimination regional. And while the goal is the program’s first trip to the College World Series, the Dutchwomen know, regardless of how they fare, that the rest of the CAA realizes Hofstra is back where it belongs.

“We brought the tradition back to Hofstra and we’re going to keep that tradition going,” said outfielder Kris Root, who is part of a senior class that never lost a CAA series. “I think we took care of our business by leaving no doubt to anyone that we were the best team in the conference, and I think that by us doing that, we showed them that we deserved to win it and we will keep winning it.”

Winning conference titles is just about all Edwards has done at Hofstra since he arrived in 1990. Sports come (neither women’s soccer nor women’s golf existed when Edwards arrived) and sports go (football was a Division III powerhouse in 1990). Coaches come and coaches go: There have been 45 coaching changes and three athletic directors at Hofstra since Edwards stepped foot on campus and the only coach at Hofstra who predates Edwards is men’s soccer coach Richard Nuttall, who took over in 1989.

Through it all there has been Edwards, who was inducted into the National Fastpitch Coaches Association Hall of Fame last December, and a dominant softball team. The Dutchwomen have won their conference’s regular season or tournament title in each of the last 19 seasons, a streak that encompasses four conferences (the ECC, ECAC, NAC/America East and the CAA). The youngest player on this year’s team, Tessa Ziemba, was nine months old when Hofstra’s championship streak started in the spring of 1992.

Hofstra also won 11 straight conference tournaments—a Division I softball record—before the Dutchwomen sputtered last spring and didn’t record a victory in the CAA Tournament.

The success of Edwards and the softball team is particularly noticeable at the end of what has been a trying school year for Hofstra sports. But Edwards doesn’t think about what the softball team means in the context of a nine-month period in which football was extinguished and three different men had the title of head basketball coach.

“I just come to work everyday and do my job—I don’t think about any of that,” Edwards said. “I just worry about my own little team and my 18 young ladies that I’m in charge of and I don’t think about anything other than doing the best that I can do.

“I don’t worry about anything. I’m very tunnel-visioned, very much concerned only about my team and what I have to do to have them have the success that they deserve.”

Edwards has instilled into the Dutchwomen a similar focus and a belief that no game—not even an NCAA Tournament game—is any bigger than the last. “It’s not necessarily about playing the perfect game, it’s not necessarily about getting hyped up,” Root said. “It’s about staying calm and playing it like it’s any other game. Because if you make it more than that, that’s when you mess up.”

“Just another game on just another field,” Edwards said. “Every game we play, it’s just another game. We come to the ballpark to have a good time, to play softball.”

Then, with a grin, he added: “It’s like that great line in The Rookie: ‘You know what we get to do today? We get to play baseball.’ Well, you know what we get to do today? We get to play softball.

“So I don’t care if we’re playing in Arizona or playing here at Hofstra or if we’re playing Iona up there. Wherever we’re playing, it doesn’t make a difference. What we get to do today is we get to play and we get to play at a very high level.”

Email Jerry at defiantlydutch@yahoo.com or follow Defiantly Dutch at http://twitter.com/defiantlydutch.