SAN MARCOS, TX — Saturday will mark the beginning of a "new season" for Texas State softball as the Bobcats open up Sun Belt Conference action with a three-game series against App State at Bobcat Stadium.
The series, which will be streamed on ESPN+, was originally slated to begin on Friday, March 11 at 6 p.m. and be spread across three days. However, frigid temperatures and high winds forced a schedule change: moving Friday night's game to Saturday, thus creating a doubleheader beginning at 1 p.m. CT with the second game to following 30 minutes after the conclusion. The three-game series will wrap up on Sunday, March 13 at 11 a.m. CT.
Texas State (11-7) heads into this weekend looking to win its first Sun Belt series of the season for the third straight year and seventh time in nine seasons since its first season in the league in 2014.
INSIDE THE SERIES: App State
Since App State joined the Sun Belt Conference on July 1, 2014, Texas State is 12-1 against the Mountaineers. The Bobcats are 7-1 against App State in games played in San Marcos, while a perfect 5-0 against the Mountaineers in the mountains of Boone, N.C.
The two programs met only twice during the 2021 season — both games occurring in North Carolina — with Texas State taking the single-day doubleheader (4-3, 8-3) on Sunday, March 21. In the first game, the Bobcats hurried out to a 2-0 lead after the first inning and eventually withstood a seventh-inning rally from the Mountaineers. In the second game, App State plated three in the second, before Texas State scored eight unanswered, capped by a
Tara Oltmann grand slam in the top of the seventh.
This weekend's series will mark the first trip to San Marcos for App State since April 5-7, 2019. The series was altered from a three-game-over-three-span to a Friday doubleheader (April 5) and a Sunday game (April 7), which was eventually canceled. Texas State won the series-opening game, 2-0, behind a complete game shutout from
Meagan King, before App State took the second game, 2-1, for its first-ever win over the Bobcats.
WALK THE LINE
Since Texas State's trip to Arizona last weekend,
Anna Jones has had a keen eye at the plate. Prior to the Bobcats' opening game of the Wildcat Invitational against Loyola Chicago, Jones had earned six walks in 12 games. In the five games since the Bobcats' win over the Ramblers, Jones has drawn eight walks, including a pair at Texas A&M on Wednesday, March 9. Even more impressively, Jones did not have an official at bat in the Bobcats' five-inning win over North Dakota on Friday, March 4 as she drew a walk in each of her four trips to the plate. Jones is the first softball student-athlete to have four walks in a single game since then-freshman Ariel Ortiz — in just her third career collegiate game — drew four against Sam Houston State on Feb. 7, 2015. Ortiz went on the become the program's career leader in walks with 110.
ON THE EDGE
Sara Vanderford enters this weekend's three-game series standing on the edge of a few milestones. Vanderford, having played just one full season of collegiate softball through this point, has accounted for 96 career hits, including 24 doubles and 18 home runs, while also scoring 63 runs and drawing 32 walks in 273 career plate appearances. Those numbers, along with her career .352 batting average, all make the,
technically, junior the program's active career leader in those categories.
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