The 2011 season began with business as usual for the LSU softball team.
LSU coach Yvette Girouard opened her 11th season with LSU, and the Tigers rolled through the early nonconference schedule, winning 12 of their first 17 games.
The high point of the early season came Feb. 16 against Southeastern Louisiana. Sophomore pitcher Rachele Fico threw the third perfect game in program history, striking out seven of the 15 batters she faced.
“Being in this atmosphere, surrounded by my teammates, it’s just a great day to be a Tiger,” Fico said after the game. “I love it here. My teammates mean the world to me, and it amazes me that I was able to accomplish something like that with my teammates behind me.”
But on March 4, the season took a surprising turn. Girouard announced she would retire at the end of the season, leaving most of the players in shock.
“It was a really sad moment,” said junior outfielder Ashley Langoni. “It was shocking to us that she was going to be leaving us this year. There were a lot of tears shed.”
The Tigers rallied behind their legendary leader to win all three games following Girouard’s announcement, but the season began slipping away when LSU opened its Southeastern Conference schedule.
LSU dropped five straight games against then-No. 2 Florida and then-No. 1 Georgia. The Tigers continued to struggle, falling to Southern Miss and Kentucky. That skid dropped LSU out of the rankings for the first time since 2005.
But the Tigers rebounded to take two out of three from Kentucky, and they haven’t looked back since.
Since that opening loss to Kentucky, the Tigers have won 20 of their last 23 contests. LSU’s only three losses during that period came in a three-game sweep by then-No. 6 Tennessee.
The high point of Girouard’s final season came when the Tigers swept then-No. 1 Alabama, the program’s first series sweep of a top-ranked opponent. The wild series saw 31 innings and two extra-inning walk-off home runs by junior infielder Anissa Young.
“That weekend was phenomenal,” Girouard said. “We had always dreamed of sweeping them, but at that point we weren’t playing well, and they were.”
LSU closed the season on a 12-game winning streak, taking its final 11 SEC games to finish second in the SEC West and clinch a spot in the SEC tournament for the 14th consecutive season.
Despite the success LSU had this season, the offense struggled to find its stride. The Tigers were unable to record a hit against Alabama in a 2-0 victory for LSU.
But Fico and junior pitcher Brittany Mack fueled LSU with dominant pitching efforts. The duo combined for a 29-14 record and struck out 322 batters. They also recorded five consecutive shutouts from April 20-27.
But for sophomore catcher Lauren Houston, the most critical part of the season is sending out Girouard on a high note.
“All we’re going to try and do is keep playing well and keep playing hard the way we have been,” Houston said. “We’re on a winning streak, so we’re just going to keep playing Tiger softball.”
 
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Contact Hunter Paniagua at [email protected]