Texas Lutheran Softball picked to claim seventh consecutive SCAC Championship

LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. -- Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference softball coaches have selected Texas Lutheran as the favorite entering the 2021 season, based on balloting in the annual preseason coaches' poll.

Texas Lutheran enters the season as the defending national champion for NCAA Division III after the 2020 season was cut short due to Covid-19.

The Bulldogs were the unanimous selection to finish first in the poll after collecting all eight first place votes and 64 total points.

The Bulldogs won the program's first-ever NCAA Division III Softball National Championship after sweeping Emory (Ga.) in the 2019 championship finals.

Southwestern, which set a program record for wins in a season (35) in 2019 and was off to a 14-5 start in 2020, finished behind TLU in the preseason rankings with 46 points.

Schreiner, who started the 2020 season 3-0 in SCAC play and won seven of its last nine games before the season was halted, checks in at third with 43 points.

Trinity, which is looking for its first 20-win season since 2016, finished just behind the Mountaineers in fourth with 42 points.

Making its debut in SCAC Softball in 2021, St. Thomas rounds out the top five with 36 points. Centenary, which has posted two 20-plus win seasons since 2016, finished with 31 points to claim sixth, followed by Dallas with 16 and Austin College with 10.

The Bulldogs, who open the 2021 campaign ranked second in the NFCA Division III Top 25 Preseason Coaches' Poll, return three of their top four batters in the lineup in terms of hits from the shortened 2020 season and four First Team All-SCAC performers from 2019.

Leading the way is junior outfielder Kelly Jurden, the 2019 SCAC Player-of-the-Year who topped all Bulldog hitters last season with 30 hits while posting a .429 batting average, stealing 23 bases, scoring 21 runs, and posting nine RBI in just 20 games.

The 2019 SCAC Newcomer-of-the-Year, Casey Martin, along with Chassety Raines, round out the returning First Team All-SCAC performers in the lineup. That duo combined for 38 hits, 24 runs scored, 22 RBI, 17 stolen bases and nine extra base hits in 2020.

In the circle, Kayla Oliveira is the fourth First Team All-Conference performer from the 2019 National Championship squad to return in 2021, and she is joined in the rotation by Raines, Ashlyn Strother, and Sydney Ouellette. Last year that quartet combined for a 19-1 record with 86 strikeouts and an 0.80 ERA and allowed just 13 earned runs in 113.1 innings of work.

Leading Texas Lutheran from the dugout in 2021 will be Wade Wilson, who enters his 10th year as head coach with an overall record of 301-67 (.818) after posting a record of 19-1 in last year's abbreviated season. Wilson has guided the Bulldogs to six SCAC titles, earned five SCAC Coach-of-the-Year accolades and added NFCA Division III National Coaching Staff of the Year to his resume following the run to the national championship in 2019.

Since the SCAC began sponsoring softball as a championship sport in 1999, seven different teams have claimed conference championships. Trinity leads the way in that grouping with seven titles (1999, 2000-02, 2005-07), while Texas Lutheran is currently second with six (2014-19). DePauw captured three (2008-09, 2011), Southwestern two (2010, 2013) and Millsaps (2003), Univ. of the South-Sewanee (2004) and Birmingham-Southern have each secured one title.

The 2021 SCAC softball season begins on February 4th, while the first conference series of the season are scheduled for Friday, March 5th. The 2021 SCAC Softball Tournament will be held at the end of April and the beginning of May on the campus of Schreiner University as the double-elimination tournament will begin on Friday the 30th.