Jack McLaughlin
Outfielder Kelly Welsh says the team is “peaking at the right time.”
One sign of a successful season is how many fans show up at the games. By that measuring stick alone, the 2017 University of Wisconsin softball team — which heads into the Big Ten Tournament this weekend as the No. 6 seed — is already triumphant.
On April 23, the Badgers packed Goodman Diamond with a record 2,297 fans in a 8-0 loss to Michigan; the old attendance record was 2,007. When you consider that UW only won three games at home all season en route to a 32-14 overall record, that’s impressive.
This team made its mark on the road and at neutral sites, including a three-game sweep of Maryland the first weekend in May to end the regular season at 11-11 in the Big Ten — good for sixth place. (Minnesota won the conference, with a remarkable 22-1 record).
The Badgers outscored the Terps, 18-6 in the series, and rallied from a 3-1 deficit in Game 2 for a 5-3 win.
“To get three wins going into the postseason, I think we have everything moving in the right direction at the right time,” sophomore Kelly Welsh (who went 2-for-4 with one run in Wisconsin’s regular-season 5-0 finale at Maryland) told UWBadgers.com. “We’re peaking at the right time. We had a good preseason and then had some ups and downs, but for us to be making strides right now, it’s really exciting to jump into the Big Ten Tournament and see who we play next.”
Next up for the Badgers is No. 11-seed Iowa (19-31), a team Wisconsin faced in early April at Goodman Diamond — taking two out of three games. First pitch is at 6 p.m. (CST) Thursday, May 11. The winner will meet No. 3-seed Ohio State (33-15) on Friday night in the quarterfinals.
The Big Ten Tournament runs Thursday through Saturday at Wilpon Complex on the University of Michigan campus. Only 12 of the conference’s 14 teams will compete. Badgers head coach Yvette Healy, who coached UW to its only Big Ten Tournament championship in 2013, is thrilled to be among them.
“The Big Ten is so strong, it’s such a tough conference. To be able to get 11 wins and be a .500 team in conference is a really big deal in a conference like ours,” Healy told UWBadgers.com. “Now it’s all about winning one game at a time.”