March 2, 2015
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -
By Rich Dougherty, GoPSUsports.com Student Staff Writer
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - The frigid State College temperatures in February and March make it nearly impossible to play on Beard Field early in the softball season. Penn State competes in four star-studded tournaments far away from home before its first home contest on March 18.
Together, this season's tournaments total 25 games for the Nittany Lions, two of which against ranked teams. No one likes a 25 game road trip, especially to start the year, but Coach Amanda Lehotak only sees the positives of such a grueling schedule.
"One of the reasons I like the tough schedule is because of how good our conference is," Lehotak said. "We're ranked third in conference strength, so we need some quality experience before entering the conference slate."
Coach Lehotak and her team will gain a bevy of experience before conference play with notable games against strong SEC teams including Mississippi State, Arkansas, Missouri and Georgia. Freshman pitcher Jessica Cummings echoed her coach's philosophy on the tough competition.
"It's definitely an advantage playing so many quality teams on the road," Cummings said. "We have such strong competition in our conference so we have to get used to hostile environments. If we can handle the large SEC crowds in the beginning of the season, it won't even be a factor once we reach conference play."
Out of Penn State's 56 games this year, 41 are away from Happy Valley. That amounts to an absurdly lopsided 73% of contests taking place in unfamiliar territories.
Playing a ton of away games is tough in so many ways, but we genuinely enjoy it," Lehotak said. "To show our product, who we are, and how we've been representing Penn State across the country is everything."
No matter how fun and unique it is to play on a plethora of fields against storied programs, there's nothing like a rowdy home game at Beard Field. As the home opener quickly approaches, coaches and players are becoming more and more excited as every day passes.
"All they talk about is playing at Beard Field," Lehotak said. "When we have recruits in, I never have to tell them about our fans. When you hit a homerun it looks like it's going to Beaver Stadium, so it's really neat. We cannot wait to get back to playing here."
"It's going to be so exciting to finally play at Beard Field," said Cummings. "We already have so much confidence this year. We're so excited to show our fans how hard we've been working and hopefully that translates to a ton of home wins."
Success at home has become the backbone of coach Lehotak's cluster of goals in 2015. Her message is simple: home losses are a big no-no.
"We don't want to lose at home," said Lehotak. This is our house and we're going to protect it. We didn't play very well last year at home, so hopefully with all the grit we have and the training we've been doing, we will have a much better home performance."
The players seem to be buying in to this all-important objective as well.
"We don't hope to win at home. We need to," senior Maegan Tupinio said. "It's mostly a mental thing. We have to commit to the fact that we won't accept losing at home. If we do that we'll be successful and it'll be fun too."
"Coach Lehotak always tells us we don't lose at home," said Cummings. "We know how important it is to take care of business with our fans cheering us on. It'll be a great experience when we have our crowd there supporting us."
A key to home success will be composure. Even with such a small amount of home games, it's essential that the pressure doesn't get to the young Nittany Lions.
"One of the reasons I scheduled a midweek game before our first conference game is because last year we played a conference game first," said Lehotak. "They were so amped up with so much energy to play in front of the Beards and all of our fans that they crashed. I thought it was vital this year to get that out of the way before we play Northwestern."
As for the process, the long road trip presents many challenges to student-athletes. In the span of 36 days, the team will travel to Florida (twice), Mississippi, California and Texas, which puts a severe dent in study time. Maegan Tupinio is all too familiar with losing time for school for time on a plane.
"Keeping up with school is the hardest part about playing so many road games," said Tupinio. "We come back at absurd hours at night and we still have to get up for school. It's definitely exhausting. We also have to keep our grades up in order to practice and play."
Cummings, on the other hand, is just getting used to the busy work load in her first year as a collegiate student-athlete.
"Keeping up with class is always a struggle," Cummings said. "We're given every opportunity we could ask for like tutors and team study halls. That was one of the reasons I chose to come here. The support to succeed academically and athletically is better than any other school I considered."
The Blue and White will continue its streak away from home on March 10 vs. Pacific.