BATON ROUGE – The No. 19 LSU softball team held its annual media day Wednesday at Tiger Park. Head coach Yvette Girouard along with associate head coach James DeFeo and assistant coach Kristen Hobbs Cain addressed the media to preview the upcoming season for the Tigers.
Afterwards, infielder Jessica Mouse and pitcher Rachele Fico met with the media for one-one-one sessions in the locker room.
LSU is two days away from first pitch and playing host to the Wilson/DeMarini Tiger Classic. Bowling Green, Louisiana Tech and Purdue head to the Capital City as the Tigers open the season at home for the first time since 2008.
Fans can follow the team’s social media pages at www.Facebook.com/lsusoftball and on Twitter at Twitter.com/LSU_Softball.
Ticket information for LSU’s marquee home schedule that features 14 games against 2010 NCAA Tournament foes highlighted by home series with SEC heavyweights Alabama, Florida, Kentucky and Tennessee is available at www.LSUtix.net.
The entire session can be viewed for free in the Geaux Zone and a transcript is listed below.
LSU Softball Media Day Quotes
Head Coach Yvette Girouard
Opening statement…
“Thank you all for coming. To talk about the schedule a little bit, we have nine games on TV this year. That includes CST, ESPNU and of course every SEC tournament game is broadcasted. We will start this weekend with our opener. We have three good teams coming in: Louisiana Tech, Bowling Green and Purdue. I’m sure Purdue and Bowling Green haven’t seen too much of the dirt, although I don’t know how much advanced we are because the weather has played havoc with us also. I think this is the coldest spring beginning I can remember in a long time and it has affected our team.
Then we’ll have a home game against Southeastern and we’ll head over to Houston. We’ll come back home, play McNeese, and then we’ll go out to one of the premiere tournaments in the country, the Palm Springs Classic. They call it the Cathedral City Classic, and our opening game is against Arizona, the No. 1 team in the country. The last team we were out at Palm Springs, I wasn’t really sure I wanted to go back because there was 50 homeruns hit on the first day. If you have young pitchers, they can leave there shell shocked. It’s the [thin] air, the fences are short. It’s also at the beginning [of the season], and the umpires are a little tight. We’ll play Arizona, Cal-Berkley, and Fordham. Fordham has a first-team All-American pitcher on their team, and I’m sure we’ll see her. Then we play Cal-Poly who always has a good team. That tournament is going to be phenomenal.
We come back home, and we have a very good tournament. Hofstra is a team that is always in regionals and super regionals. They haven’t made it to the World Series, but they have a Hall of Fame coach. They’re in it every year and probably one of the best teams in the east, if not the best. You have Texas coming in who returns all of their pitching. They won the Big 12 last year and I think they’re going to be a prohibitive favorite to win it again. So we have some awesome teams in there.
Then we start SEC play with Florida on Ash Wednesday in a doubleheader. We’re hoping that we’ll have a great crowd for that since Florida is a World Series participant. Then we follow that up with having to go to Georgia on the weekend. The opening of the SEC schedule is pretty brutal. We thought the Florida and Alabama stretch last year was tough, but this one is as tough. I’m not going to go through it all, but we do have Florida, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee and South Carolina coming in here. Alabama, Tennessee and Florida are the heavyweights. Except for Georgia, you’ve got all the heavyweights coming into Tiger Park this year. Hopefully that home field advantage will really kick into play.
We have 13 letterwinners coming back, sparked by Rachele Fico and Anissa Young, who were the highest award winners last year. We’re predicted second in the SEC West behind Alabama. Alabama still has their senior pitcher in Kelsey Dunne and returns a very good team. We have 15 games scheduled against Top 25 opponents, nine games against 2010 Women’s College World Series teams, and Florida, Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia are all ranked within the Top 8 in the country. This caliber of SEC softball has just become phenomenal so quick just being 13 years old.
I’m going to talk a little bit about the pitchers. Obviously, Rachele Fico will be our No. 1. She’s going to be our go-to girl. Things are going to rely on Rachele with how this team handles itself and how far we go with our goals. She’s a sophomore, old beyond her years and her maturity [level] in the circle. She wants the ball all the time, and she’s as good a competitor as I’ve ever coached. Much to my chagrin, she went home at first over the summer and threw a lot in women’s ball. I wasn’t very happy about it at first because I was concerned that we only have three pitchers on this staff and I didn’t want her to come back arm fatigued, but it obviously helped her. She got better and stronger. I think she’s learned some valuable lessons pitching on this level in the SEC and throughout the country. We expect big things from her.
The key to our pitching staff is going to be trying to keep Brittany Mack healthy. She hasn’t been able to make it past half of the season the last two years. She has shown tremendous promise but has gone down both years with a stress fracture in her arm. We’ve really worked on her mechanics, trying to keep her looser and more fluid so that she doesn’t exert that much stress on her forearm. It seems to be working, but we’ll have to see how it plays out. She unfortunately has a touch of bronchitis right now so I’m hoping that she’ll be OK for the weekend. Then we have our freshman pitcher Meghan Patterson, who has surpassed my expectations for her so far. I think she has a very bright future. She hits her target. She has some very good pitches. She has great movement, late movement, but as a freshman she’s going to have to learn under fire. We see that sometimes in scrimmages and practices. As freshman they come in, and from high school and summer ball you can make mistakes, but on this level when you make a mistake it can cost you a run. That’s what they have to learn under baptismal fire. I think she can give us some quality innings.
We don’t have as deep a staff as I would like, and we don’t have as deep a staff as last year by any means. In our favor with SEC competition is what the coaches have been fighting for seven years and the Athletic Directors wouldn’t grant it to us but we finally got it: single game formats. We have a Friday night game, a Saturday game and a Sunday game. We’re all ecstatic. I think when it’s all said and done our fans are going to love it too. There were four different times last year where we were on the field for 11 hours. No other sport asks that of their players, staff or anyone surrounding their program. I think it’s going to be good for softball, our fans and all the way around. Could Rachele Fico throw all 28 games? She probably could do that with this format. Are we going to ask her to do that? No. That kind of format, having a limited number of pitchers is really in our benefit. It gives us time to go home and figure out some kind of adjustments then come back and meet our opponent. Again, no other sport gets to win a game and then 15 minutes later has to play again. I think this is awesome for our sport.”
On the effects of cold weather lately on the team…
“We have a lot of back problems right now and the weather is not helping that. I would like to thank Paul Mainieri and the baseball team. We went over there and used their [batting] cages once because ours aren’t enclosed. When you carry 19 players and people start to go down, you have to be really careful about repetitions and keeping them healthy for six games in a weekend, much less 56 in a total season.”
On the realistic expectations for this team…
“You look at last year, and we really had a great year. We had a 24-game winning streak, we were in the finals against Alabama for the SEC Championship, but it didn’t end well. We couldn’t score a run on the last day [of NCAA Regionals] and that left a bitter taste in everybody’s mouth. The kids might talk about championships, but they have their own goals. I’m very proud of them. They never talk about winning everything. It’s all about the little things trying to get to our goals. If you go down the stairs, they have their goals for this year and it’s all about fighting. We gave them boxing gloves this year as a symbol. They’re a physical symbol of what we’re trying to accomplish. Everybody has a little boxing glove and every inning that we win, our trainer [Ana Gross] will hang a boxing glove in our dugout to show us if we competed and won that inning. We’re not projected to win anything. We’ll just take the high road like the Green Bay Packers.”
On if the team will use regionals last year as motivation…
“I said last year that I really like this team. Again, this is a team that huddles on their own every day before practice to get their goals accomplished. We’ve had no problems whatsoever. We had a 3.2 GPA in the fall as a team. The only problems we have are some nagging injuries that will hurt us a little bit at the beginning as we try to figure out how to platoon everybody. They’re very self motivated and that’s a pretty cool thing for our coaching staff.”
On the catchers…
“I was very disappointed in both of them last year. It’s been a sore spot, the catching position. But they’ve both answered the challenge. Lauren Houston is the player we recruited. I hate to use the coaching term of “deer in headlights” but that’s exactly what she was. But she’s no longer that player. She was the MVP of that district in Lafayette. She has a phenomenal arm. Her hitting has always been a little suspect. I think she was more known for her defense, but she’s been knocking the cover off of the ball and is very confident in her ability right now. Morgan Russell did much better last year, and looks good again this year. She’s one of those with a back problem. She handles the staff extremely well. As James [DeFeo] said, you talk about holes in your line-up where there are outs, and that was an out for us. We talked about that, but they look so much better offensively for us right now.”
On if Rachele Fico can lead the SEC in ERA again…
“I think she can. She’s going to have to be careful in Palm Springs. Everybody’s ERA goes up there. But I think she can. She’s learned you have to keep the ball in the ballpark if the bats are as hot as we think sometimes. That’s kind of tough because they’ll come in and say it was a good pitch, but the pitching coach thinks if it goes over the fence it can’t be a good pitch. When you look at the video, you realize it was a good pitch, the ball just went out. That’ll be a challenge for her, and I’m sure she expects to meet that challenge.”
On who is stepping up now that Kirsten Shortridge is gone…
“We have that huge junior class. They’re finally seeing the light, and they understand the battle. They have been tremendous. [Jessica] Mouse, [Tiffany] Shaw and [Ashley] Applegate are good leaders but that junior class makes up the nucleus of our team. They have been phenomenal, and they get it. You’re not going to replace [Kirsten] Shortridge. She’s a Britni Sneed type of kid. That’s a talent that comes around every so often. The junior class has done a very good job.”
On the wind at Tiger Park…
“Soccer kind of warned us about the direction of the wind and how it changes so much, but I had no idea. Like James [DeFeo] says, there’s days where you’re not going to hit it out of here. It just doesn’t carry that much. Sometimes, that’s a good thing. Georgia came in here last year hitting all those home runs and we had the 30 mile-per-hour winds coming in, and the first thing I said was, not today Bulldogs. And it really helped us.”
On switching to a more speed oriented offense…
“We had to make some kind of adjustments. You can’t have that kind of pitching, play that kind of defense and stay home. We needed to do something else. If the park does stay this way, then we have to go more to a speed game. The game has gone towards power, so we have to have a healthy mix. But we definitely needed more speed to wreck havoc.”
Associate Head Coach James DeFeo
On the outfielders…
“This year’s outfield, they’re going to be led by the two Ashley’s. We have junior left fielder Ashley Langoni and senior right fielder Ashley Applegate. To harp on a couple more injuries, Ashley Applegate is out right now with a slight fracture in her glove hand, her left hand, but she’s been incredibly diligent in her rehab, so we look to have her back real soon. ‘Lang’ is healthy; that’s a good thing. Speaking of Lang, she’s really solidified herself as one of the best defensive outfielders in the country. She routinely makes incredible plays look super easy — diving plays, plays over the tarp. Nothing drops out there in left. Another player that was having a very good spring training before going down to injury was Katie Guillory. She was just making a routine play, her knee buckled and she had to have ACL surgery. We look for her to come back as soon as possible.
“We have freshman Simone Heyward in centerfield. She’s going to fill some big shoes, filling those of [Kirsten] Shortridge, but I think the fans at Tiger Park are going to come out and see something really special out there. Simone is super fast. She can track down any ball in the outfield. She’s got a really good arm, and she does amazing things at the plate. She’s been hitting, slapping and bunting. She’s right up there in the speed category with Kirsten, so she’ll be really fun to watch. In right field, we have senior Tiffany Shaw and two more fabulous freshmen in Jacee Blades and Alex Boulet. In addition to Simone, those three will probably make up one of the fastest outfields in the country. To begin the year with Applegate’s vacancy, we’re probably going to platoon Jacee and Alex out there in right. Then, we’ll have Simone in center and of course Lang in left.”
On if he recruited Heyward to be a center fielder…
“Absolutely, we recruited Simone as a centerfielder. She was one of the fastest recruits in the country for that recruiting class. We were lucky to get her over Stanford, Cal, UCLA and steal her away from the Pac-10 teams. She absolutely loves it out here, and from day one she stepped into centerfield and made it her home.”
On how the team has been molded by the park…
“We’ve definitely made it a point to recruit toward our strengths and needs, especially in dealing with the wind factor here in Tiger Park. In the old Tiger Park, the ball carried very well. Wind didn’t affect the ball that much because we were surrounded by the natatorium and the tennis center. Out here we’re right here by the levee. There are no buildings, so we get some wind now and again. Unfortunately during the spring, that 25-to-30 mile per hour wind blows straight in, so we’ve definitely made it a point to get some more speed, and we’ve definitely added that this year. You’ll see the gains and dividends in that. In our fall tournaments, we stole more bases than we’ve ever stolen before. Look to see at least two to three, maybe even four or five lefties in the lineup at one time this year.”
On how he coaches the players on the wind factor…
“There are certain days where we need nothing but line drives and groundballs. There will be days where if anything is in the air, it’s going to be caught. We tell our girls, and that’s what we really strive for in our batting practice. We don’t look to hit the long ball in our batting practice. We look to hit it hard, but we want it up the middle or in the gap. We want it on a line because we know on any given day in this park, anything in the air can be caught.”
On the offensive lineup…
“This year’s lineup looks to be the most balanced we’ve had in years. We have a great combination of speed, power and consistency, and that’s going to be a huge luxury when talking about dealing with tough pitching matchups in the conference. Referring back to the speed, we have several lefties. Applegate of course, she’s coming into her senior year. She’s going to look to have her best year. When we add in the quickness factor of Heyward, Shaw, Blades, Boulet and redshirt junior Cassie Trosclair, we have one of the fastest lineups in the country if we put all of those in together. We’ll be looking upon senior Jess Mouse, juniors [Ashley] Langoni, [Anissa] Young and [Juliana] Santos for the bulk of the RBIs and also Tammy Wray, our freshman, big slugger, big hitter. She’s going to be looked upon to drive in some runs here and again. Allison Falcon and Heidi Pizer also will be getting a lot of playing time this coming weekend, and we look to really monitor their progress at the plate. I think the most progress and our biggest surprise offensively, to be honest this spring was at the catcher position. Both junior Morgan Russell and sophomore Lauren Houston have been absolutely crushing the ball in the scrimmages and right now, platooning them, I don’t think we’re going to lose any kind of stick one way or another. They’re both throwing out people, both are incredible defensive catchers and like I said, they’ve been swinging the bat really well, so all in all, we’ll have a lot of options this year to match up tough pitching. We can go speed lineup, balanced lineup or a power lineup, so it’s going to be fun to watch.”
On making adjustments after the offense struggled at times in key situations last year…
“We’ve made a ton of adjustments. I think it carries over to the girls. When we came in this fall we made it a point to really, really work hard on the offensive side of the game. We’ve recognized that, and I think the girls have really taken it upon themselves to make adjustments. Just talking to the team yesterday after we scrimmaged, I was so proud of them because we scored a bunch of runs. If we’re scoring runs off our pitchers, that’s a good thing because we have an incredible pitching staff. But what I was most proud of were not just adjustments from at-bat to at-bat but in at-bat adjustments from pitch-to-pitch. I think the teams that make the adjustments the fastest within the game, those are the teams I think you’ll see come out on top.”
On if the new format will help the offense…
“I don’t know if it’s going to help the offense because we’re going to be seeing a lot more No. 1 pitchers. Usually the second game of the doubleheader, you might get a No. 2 or a No. 3, so I don’t know if that’s going to help or hinder, but we’ll be prepared for whatever we face.”
Assistant Coach Kristen Hobbs Cain
Opening statement…
“Obviously, you did see Kristen Hobbs Cain. It’s a funny joke that coach [Yvette] Girouard likes to remind me every day that she isn’t going to recognize the new last name. I’ve been Hobbs since the day she’s known me, and I’m sure it’s going to be Hobbs until the day we’re not working together anymore if she’s not coaching anymore.
“Off of a great, great defensive year last year that we had, I’m really thrilled to have the strong returning presence that we have. Coming off last season, we led the SEC in fielding percentage, and we were ranked eighth overall nationally, so it’s a high mark that we started off with working this fall. I challenged the girls to remain solid on their fundamentals and to make the aggressive plays in practice so that they’d become old hat in games. That’s one thing that we like to do is make them be overly aggressive in practice so that it becomes second nature. As Coach Girouard just told you, one of the most solid members of our infield is Jessica Mouse, who yes, it’s very sad that she’ll be out this weekend, but one thing you’ll see from the defensive players that we have, they’re easy to rotate. We have a lot of girls that can play many different positions. We’re going to miss Jess, but hopefully like Coach Girouard said, we have to have some people step up. Jess was an All-SEC Defensive Team member last year, and I would not be surprised to see her name again on the All-SEC Defensive Team this year. She’s marvelous, you don’t get anything through the ‘five-six hole.’ It’s hard for me to work her hard in practice; she makes everything look so easy. She’ll never disappoint you out there.
“Across the field from her is Anissa Young, who is probably as solid as you can get as a first baseman. She was a member of the NFCA All-Region Team last year. She’s super vocal, very aggressive, a leader on the team off the field and on the field, and she acts as a glue to the younger players. She helps them step up to their ability. Moving on up the middle, we have Allison Falcon, Juliana Santos, Cassie Trosclair and Heidi Pizer. Juliana has battled some injuries. She has some bad luck every once in awhile with getting hurt, but she battles, she has a solid glove and she’ll knock down anything you hit your way. You’ve seen her play here at shortstop and second base. This year you’ll see her primarily over at second base. I think she’s worked really, really hard this fall to get back there and maintain a spot out there. Allison Falcon is really, really fun to watch. She did an unbelievable job last year for us at shortstop and contributed to 22 double plays that we turned as a team last year. She was a very integral part in turning those. She’s all over the place, you’ll see her dive and jump. She’s very acrobatic and makes a lot of really tough plays look easy.
“Cassie Trosclair is a transfer from Auburn. She had to sit out last season due to the SEC transfer rule. She’s very fast and has a lot of range. You’ll see her work with Juliana at second base, and you’ll see her spark up the lineup with her speed; that’s for sure. Heidi Pizer is a really strong presence, real tall, perfect body type for a middle infielder. She does act as a utility for us. She can play some first and third, so you’ll see her kind of battle all over the place. Tammy Wray is a really highly-recruited player from New York. It came down to us and Florida, so we’re really happy to have her as a Tiger and not an SEC opponent. We didn’t want to see her anywhere else but here, so we’re glad we got her. She’ll see a lot of work at shortstop, and with Mouse being out this weekend, she’ll probably see a lot of action at third base. She’s very versatile. She has great range from side-to-side, a strong arm and a really quick release. She makes a lot of quick plays on the slappers look really easy.
“I’m also going to talk about the catchers Morgan Russell and Lauren Houston. They’re constantly competing with each other. What one lacks, the other one picks up. Lauren Houston, I know we said it a lot last year, didn’t seem to be playing like herself. We’ve really seen a lot of Houston shine in practice this spring. She especially came back in tremendous shape after the fall. She has kicked her butt in running. Her arm looks awesome. She’s thrown out runners in scrimmages, and Coach [James] DeFeo is going to allude to the speed we have on this team this year. Morgan’s strengths are she works really well with the pitchers. She knows how to communicate with the three of them, how to make them work best with each other. They’re both swinging the bat really well, so I think we are going to have a good, little duo back there the entire season. The last infielder that we have is Ashleigh Kuhn. She’s a transfer from Northwestern State, and she will be sitting out this season. I just wanted to throw her in there because she is a part of the infield, and she helps us out in practice.”
On if LSU will have a platoon at catcher…
“We’re going to see. I think with the SEC format we may be able to do a lot of different platooning in games. It’s going to depend on who is swinging the bat best, who is showing promise back behind the plate and who the pitchers are working well with.”
On shuffling the infield around due to injuries…
“We have six games this weekend, so I think you will see a lot of different lineups. You’ll see a lot of Cassie [Trosclair] and Jules [Santos] at second. You’ll see Anissa (Young) at first and like I said, Tammy [Wray] at third, but you may see Heidi (Pizer) roam around there on the left side, and as a sparkling surprise, you may see Anissa over there as well. We’re not sure.”
Player Quotes
Senior Infielder Jessica Mouse
On her final season …
“With this being the last go-around for our seniors, we all want to win the SEC and win a regional because this senior class hasn’t won a regional yet. This year’s chemistry has been better than ever. I have never been a part of a team since I’ve been here that has meshed so well. Our freshman class has made a major impact. We have team speed and Rachele Fico has gotten even better since last year. The new SEC rules which only allows for one game each day is going to help us and will allow Rachele to be able to pitch more. Brittany Mack is looking great and Meghan Patterson will also help us. We’re going to take it day-by-day and we’re not going to look ahead. We’re stressing the little things this year. We’re going to focus on winning each inning, each game and hopefully we’ll progress to a championship.”
On the team speed …
“I always think about speed in terms of how I would react on defense. When there’s a fast player up at the plate, the thing in your mind as a defender is you have to be ready for anything. Speed puts the defense on its heels, so it creates havoc. Having more speed in our lineup is going to create more havoc for the other teams. Watching our freshmen develop has been fun. They have all the weapons. They can bunt, slap hit and even have some power. Simone Heyward hit an inside-the-park home run yesterday during our scrimmage. The fans are going to enjoy watching our slap hitters work this year.”
On the disappointing ending to last season …
“I think it left a nasty taste in everyone’s mouth. There’s nothing like hosting a regional in front of all your fans and not living up to what you’re supposed to. It hurts a little bit, so you have to flush it, leave it behind and think about the future. However, at the same time, you have to look at the past and see what you need to build on, which we did. We ran and lifted hard as we have always done. We started to focus on some of the things we needed to focus on. Hitting was a weakness last year. I think a lot of our players went home and realized what they needed to work on. Our pitchers also got better in the offseason. We have a lot of competition in different areas this year which will make us work harder and has definitely helped improve our team chemistry.”
Sophomore Pitcher Rachele Fico
On her confidence heading into the season …
“I have worked very hard on developing some new pitchers. My teammates have helped me develop new pitches, spin the ball tighter and have the pitches break at the right places. Our hitters are constantly asking to see live pitching which is not only beneficial to them, but also is beneficial to me. They let me know what works and what doesn’t work. It’s really nice to have so many people on this team who are willing to help me in ways that you wouldn’t expect.”
On her change-up …
“I tried lots of different change-ups last year as I played around with many different spins and grips. This year I have found one that I think I’m going to stick with, so you will probably see a consistent change-up this year. Last year, every time I threw a change-up you probably didn’t know which one you were getting because I threw it many different ways. I have finally found one that I’m comfortable with and I feel confident with it, so you will see a lot of it this year.”
On this year’s freshmen …
“Our newcomers this year are incredible and lots of fun to watch. We have so much speed which adds to the intensity and pressure of the game. Our freshmen bring lots of speed to the table. Simone Heyward, Jacee Blades and Alex Boulet are some of the fastest players I’ve ever played with. They’re lots of fun to watch and they’re eager to learn. I can’t wait to see how they pan out this year and I expect big things from all of them.”
On the role the elements play in Tiger Park …
“Different factors can play a part in how a game plays out on any given day. I’ve never played in a park like Tiger Park. It’s beautiful, I’m honored to be able to step into that circle and wear “LSU” across my chest. I try not to think much about the role the wind and the elements play in a game, but I’m well aware of them. However, we’re out here every day, so we’re very used to them. I also think the elements can give you a sense of having a home field advantage.”