With the new blood of nine freshmen on the LSU softball team,coach Yvette Girouard is taking the players to school.
“There are times out there when they don’t even looklike they know how to play softball anymore,” Girouard said.”We do have a system and it’s a lot of mentaloverload.”
Getting back to the Women’s College World Series willrequire much improvement between now and May, but Girouard said shehas faith in the team.
“It will be fun to watch them grow,” Girouard said.”They’re going to make mistakes just like our footballteam. They’re young. They’re going to do the wrongthing at times. But it does kick in. It’s muscle memory. Whenit does kick in they become the players that I think they alwaysdreamed they could become.”
Much of LSU’s success this season will come with finding apitcher to replace Kristin Schmidt, Girouard said. Schmidt earnedthe WCWS Most Valuable Player award last season and pitched theTigers to a 38-17 record with 362 strikeouts and a 1.28 ERA.
Girouard said sophomore pitcher Emily Turner has all the toolsnecessary to become dominant but must learn how to harness thatenergy.
“Emily Turner should be the heir apparent and she can be agreat one,” Girouard said. “She’s tremendouslystrong and fit, but when the light really clicks on in her headwith handling all of the pressure and everything that goes on withtouching the ball on every pitch, then we’ll find out howgood she can really become.”
Strengthening her arm to endure the starting pitching role,Turner said she has pitched more this fall than ever before.
“Our arms can afford to be fatigued right now,”Turner said. “Now is the time to do it if any.”
Turner had an 18-5 record for LSU last season as a freshman,including 108 strikeouts and a 1.67 ERA.
Challenging Turner for the starting role will be freshmen MeganJolly and Tiffany Garcia.
“I kind of feel like I’m in the spot that KristinSchmidt was in last year,” Turner said. “She took meunder her wing. She helped me out in all aspects of softball and asadjusting as a freshman to LSU. I’m doing the same with Meganand Tiffany, getting them acclimated to LSU as well as playingunder coach Girouard and playing LSU softball.”
The Tigers’ pitching staff could be a three-headed monsterwith Jolly using finesse and Garcia utilizing power, Turnersaid.
“All three of us will be good together because we all haveour different weapons,” Turner said.
One of the Tigers’ major weapons in outfielder LeslieKlein went down with a torn ACL two weeks ago, Girouard said. Kleinshould be back to compete with the team by February or March, shesaid.
“That’s a critical cog in our machine,”Girouard said. “We can’t afford to lose her witheverything else we lost. That would be six starters gone. We needfor things to fall into place — all the intangibles. Wedon’t really have control over in what really makes a seasonspecial.”
Junior right fielder Camille Harris now is the Tigers onlyreturning outfielder. She said Klein’s injury may actually bea blessing in disguise.
“Getting some new people out there and letting them getsome reps helps us out a lot,” Harris said.