Bulldogs Dominate SCAC Awards

SEGUIN, Texas -- Texas Lutheran Softball collected three of the four individual awards from the Southern Collegiate Athletic Conference (SCAC) and placed 12 nominees on all-conference teams. The league announced the honors Friday.

Casey Martin (Pearland/Pearland) was named SCAC Player of the Year, Ashlyn Strother (Seabrook/Clear Falls) earned Pitcher of the Year, and head coach Wade Wilson was voted Co-Coach of the Year with St. Thomas head coach Angela Froboese. The honorees were selected by a vote of the conference head coaches.

Martin collects TLU's eighth straight SCAC Player of the Year award - following two consecutive wins from teammate Kelly Jurden (Brenham/Brenham). The Schutt Sports/NFCA Player of the Year Top 50 Finalist has paced the Bulldogs and the SCAC at the plate in 2022. She leads the conference in batting average (.448), hits (52), runs (40), and on-base percentage (.521) and ranks second in walks (20), third in stolen bases (28), and fourth in RBIs (26). Martin's 52 hits ranks 25th in the country in all of Division-III and she is currently 17 hits away from tying the single season hits record held by former SCAC Player's of the Year in Ashley Jacobsen (2013, 2014) and Taylor Yancey (2016). Martin also sits at 19th in the country in stolen bases as an instrumental part of TLU running attack that leads Division-III in stolen bases with 187. In league play, Martin is batting .403 with 19 RBIs and 17 stolen bases. This season marked the second time in her career she has achieved 25-plus stolen bases and RBI, joining TLU's Kaymee Gooden as the only two athletes in league history to produce such a performance in two separate years.

Strother, the anchor of TLU's pitching staff that sits amongst the elite in Division-III, wins her second straight Pitcher of the Year award and TLU's seventh in eight seasons. Strother has dominated in the circle this season, tallying an 18-0 record. She enters the postseason with a 0.70 earned run average (ERA). The 2021 All-American led the SCAC in wins (18), strikeouts (156), ERA (0.70), and shutouts (7) in the 2022 regular season. In conference, Strother finished 11-0 with 98 strikeouts and touted a 0.22 ERA. Nationally, Strother is ranked sixth in wins (18), fifth in shutouts (7), fifteenth in strikeouts, sixth in hits allowed per seven innings (3.58), seventh in ERA, and 12th in strikeout-to-walk ratio (10.40 K/BB). Strother would be the first pitcher since TLU's Maitlin Raycroft in 2017 and just the fourth in SCAC history to achieve the single season pitching triple crown. Her .144 batting average against also leads the league and would be the second-best mark in SCAC history. In league play, Strother is limiting opponents to just a .094 batting average. Strother, who is on pace to become just the sixth pitcher in SCAC history to lead the league in ERA in back-to-back seasons, was a five-time SCAC Pitcher-of-the-Week during the regular season. It marked the most selections in a single season since Raycroft garnered eight selections in 2017.

Texas Lutheran head coach Wade Wilson collects his seventh SCAC Coach of the Year honor and eighth overall Coach of the Year honor - earning one in the American Southwest Conference prior to joining the SCAC. This is the seventh SCAC Coach of the Year honor for Wilson in eight years. Wilson has led the Bulldogs to a 35-4 overall record and their eighth straight SCAC regular season title, along with being ranked No. 3 in the National Fastpitch Coaches Association (NFCA) poll. Froboese and Wilson are the first coaching duo to share SCAC Coach-of-the-Year honors since Birmingham-Southern's Kimball Cassady and Trinity's Selena Collins were both honored in 2012. Froboese and Wilson have now combined to win nine-straight SCAC Coach-of-the-Year accolades going back to the 2013 season.

Texas Lutheran collected a league-best 12 spots across the three all-conference teams. The Bulldogs placed six on the All-SCAC First Team with seniors Kelly Jurden and Sarah Metzer (Sugar Land/Dulles), sophomore Laura Hernandez (Missouri City/Ridge Point), freshman Faith Hernandez (Dinuba, Calif./Dinuba) joining Martin and Strother.

Sophomores Brandalyn Dee (Cibolo/Steele), Madison Johnson (Round Rock/Round Rock), and Sydney Ouellette (Corpus Christi/Gregory-Portland) and senior Chassety Raines (Spring/Klein Collins) were placed on the All-SCAC Second Team while juniors Bailey Hudgeons (Dripping Springs/Dripping Springs) and Amanda White (Lockhart/Lockhart) garnered All-SCAC Honorable Mention honors.

Jurden's first team accolades marks her third career All-SCAC First Team selection. Martin, Strother, and Metzer's first team accolades mark their second All-SCAC First Team selections while Laura and Faith Hernandez collected their first selection. Laura Hernandez was an Honorable mention selection in 2021. Dee, Johnson, and White are awarded their first conference honor while Hudgeons and Ouellette win their second and Raines her third after being a First Team selection in 2019 and 2021. Hudgeons leads the SCAC in RBIs (29) while Jurden leads the country in stolen bases with 60 stolen bases in the regular season. In conference, Ouellette led the conference with a league-low 0.15 ERA.

The SCAC All-Conference teams can be viewed in their entirety here.

No. 3 Texas Lutheran continues to compete in the 2022 SCAC Softball Championship Tournament in Irving, Texas this weekend. The top-seeded Bulldogs will face the winner of Friday's matchup between two-seed St. Thomas and three-seed Trinity on Saturday at 3 PM. The championship game will be played Sunday at 1 PM at UD Softball Field. All streaming and live stats links can be found on tlubulldogs.com.