BATON ROUGE — The eight-time Southeastern Conference Western Division champion LSU softball team began fall practice on Tuesday at Tiger Park, head coach Yvette Girouard announced.
The Tigers will practice throughout the month of October and all practices are open to the public. LSU will host the 2007 Fall Collegiate Classic in Tiger Park on Oct. 27-28. The Tigers will take on LSU-Eunice-LSU-Alexandria, Hinds Community College and Bossier Parish Community College in the two-day tournament.
The team will be welcoming new Director of Softball Operations Adam Roorbach and student assistant coach Kristen Hobbs to the staff. Roorbach joins the nationally ranked Tiger program from Houston, where he served as an assistant coach for the 2007 season. No stranger to the softball community, he was as an assistant softball coach at the Division I level for three years after spending four seasons as a head coach at the NAIA and junior college levels. Roorbach worked with current LSU assistant coach Megan Smith for one season at Western Carolina.
Hobbs joins the staff after a stellar career at LSU from 2004 through 2007. A four-year letterwinner behind the plate, the Florida native had her best season last year as a senior when she hit 14 home runs with 21 RBIs and a .279 batting average. She earned the Brad Davis SEC Community Service Scholarship and was named to the SEC Good Works Team. In addition, she was selected the Most Valuable Player of the Easton Tiger Classic and was a member of the NCAA Tempe Super Regional All-Tournament team.
The offseason saw its shares of highs and lows for the LSU program. Smith and her husband Paul Buske welcomed their first child on Aug. 6. Cooper Smith Buske was born at Women’s Hospital in Baton Rouge and came into the world weighing eight pounds and was 21 1/4 inches tall.
Smith was pregnant throughout the 2007 LSU softball season, progressing through her second and third trimesters as the Tigers captured their eighth SEC Western Division title, their fifth SEC Tournament championship and their fourth NCAA Regional title. LSU advanced to the NCAA Super Regionals for the second straight season before falling to Arizona State in Tempe to conclude the season.
In addition, LSU broke ground on the New Tiger Stadium on Oct. 9, which is expected to be completed in time for the Tigers to play their first game in the new facility in the spring of 2009. The new stadium will feature 1,289 seats? including 587 chair-back seats? and the capability of accommodating 1,200 more fans on an outfield berm.
The softball stadium will also feature first-class team facilities, including a locker room, team lounge, meeting facility, training facility, equipment room, indoor batting cages and umpire locker rooms. The New Tiger Park will be located on Skip Bertman Drive, across from the LSU School of Veterinary Medicine and adjacent to the LSU Women’s Soccer Complex.
The Tigers also mourned the death of Rose Mary Girouard, mother of head coach Yvette Girouard, who passed away on Sept. 16 at Lafayette General Medical Center. An avid softball fan for many decades, she was known as Mama G to 30 years of UL-Lafayette and LSU softball players.
The Tigers will be welcoming back 11 letterwinners from the 2007 squad that advanced to their second-straight NCAA Super Regionals, winning the NCAA Regional in Palo Alto, Calif., after earning the SEC’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament by winning their fifth SEC Tournament title.
National Fastpitch Coaches Association first-team All-American and Diamond Sports Catcher of the Year Killian Roessner returns for her final season, while Academic All-American Dee Dee Henderson, All-SEC selections Dani Hofer and Jazz Jackson, and NCAA Palo Alto Regional MVP Rachel Mitchell also return to action for the Tigers.
LSU will also be welcoming six freshmen standouts, including redshirt freshman Stacey Woods, who missed last season with an injury. Incoming freshman Starla Guffey of St. Amant, was named a first-team NFCA High School All-American and the Diamond Sports National High School Catcher of the Year, while Jessica Mouse of Tampa, Fla., and Tiffany Shaw of Shreveport both earned NFCA first-team High School All-America honors.
The 2008 season will begin with the Easton Tiger Classic on Feb. 15-17. The Tigers will host St John’s, Ball State, Nicholls State and Chattanooga in the three-day tournament at Tiger Park.