While their classmates will be taking finals, the Three Rivers College softball team will be in Utah, playing for the NJCAA national championship. The Raiders hope to be still playing when the school holds graduation — the softball-playing sophomores having already picked up their diplomas a week early. In order to leave Sunday for a flight to Las Vegas and a two-hour bus ride to St. George, Utah, the team had to take finals a week ahead of their classmates. “At the moment I’m like who cares? We get to go to the World Series, it’s pretty great,” Carleigh Burnett said of missing graduation. Three Rivers (43-14) will be one of 16 teams at the NJCAA Division I tournament that starts Wednesday. The Raiders, making their first appearance, are one of seven unranked teams in the field. First-round matchups of the double-elimination tournament were not released as of Saturday but the Raiders will open at either 5 or 7:30 p.m. Wednesday (4 or 6:30 p.m. in Poplar Bluff). The players spent the last week cramming for finals and trying to stay sharp on the diamond. “We didn’t get any final review; they’re doing that now after we’ve already taken our finals,” said Burnett. “We missed class a lot for regionals and come back here, doing a lot of self teaching for sure.” The graduating players were honored Friday night with a small ceremony. “That is so nice, we were so excited when we found out about it,” Kira Cunningham said. “The school has been so good to us. Icing on top of the cake.”
Three Rivers won its fi rst Region XVI championship then knocked off 14th-ranked Indian Hills in the best-of-3 district series to qualify. “It just kind of snowballed and grown. The confidence has grown and they’ve all gotten better,” Three Rivers coach Jeff Null said. “We’re doing something right.” The Raiders reached 40 wins for the seventh time in 29 years of the program. Freshman pitcher Summer Shockley ranks among the best in the nation with 26 wins (fifth) and 261 strikeouts (third). Another win ties Shockley for the single-season program record while the Raiders have had record-breaking performances at the plate. Allison Pingel set single-season marks for home runs (19) and RBIs (78) with Kristyn Carpenter a run shy of that team record after Randi Scruggs was on pace to break it before suffering a knee injury in the first game of the region final. Scruggs, a two-time, all region selection, hit .409 with 61 runs, 17 extra-base hits, a team-best 46 stolen bases while getting caught just twice and not making an error in center fi eld through 54 games. “When Randi got hurt, Peyton Gunn mentioned ‘do it for Randi,’ ” Cunningham said. “That gave us motivation to go ahead and pull another one out.” The Raiders blew a five run lead in the region championship against Crowder, which needed to win twice to claim in the title. Three Rivers bounced back with a 9-6 win in the second game. Another turning point to the season came after the team lost seven times in the span of fi ve days in early March. After winning its first nine to start the season, Three Rivers went 1-5 at the Joplin Bash then got swept at Jackson State two days later. One of those losses was to Indian Hills. “I thought that was a big point for us,” Null said. “Yeah we went 1-5 but we played the top teams in the nation and we were right there.” The Raiders won 15 of the next 16, including a home sweep of Crowder, with the lone loss a 4-3 setback at Jefferson. Three Rivers didn’t get swept the rest of the season and went 23-1 at Rains Field. As a team, Three Rivers is hitting .349 with an on base percentage of .413 but doesn’t rank any better than 21st in the nation for any offensive category, other than ranking ninth in stolen bases. Seven players are hitting .311 or better with Pingel’s .459 average, .502 on-base percentage and .847 slugging percentage leading the team. Carpenter (.402 avg.) has driven in 60 runs, Gracie King (.379) has 59 RBIs while Ally Law (.326) has 10 home runs and driven in 40. The Raiders are 30-0 this season when holding an opponent to three or fewer runs and 9-4 in games decided by one or two runs. “Our pitching has really been our strength and our offense has gotten better as the year has gone along,” Null said. Shockley (26-7), a freshman who helped Van Buren High School win a state championship, has a 1.92 ERA with 261 strikeouts to 79 walks in 204-plus innings. Macy Rogers, a freshman from Kirksville, Mo., is 11-2 in the circle with 26 walks and 72 strikeouts in 78 innings. “It helps when you have a couple of kids in the circle that really want it and everybody feeds off of them,” Null said. Another part of the Raiders’ success, says Cunningham, is that everybody gets along great. “I’ve never been on a team quite this close,” Cunningham said. “I think of all of them as my sisters and it’s a mutual thing.”
Brian Rosener - Daily American Republic