MONSON | Losing season takes its toll for softball team

It’s gone from bad to just painful for the softball team.

With four games still remaining for CMU, every loss now adds to its record-breaking, woeful season.

Coach Margo Jonker is not used to this. It’s not Chippewa softball – at least the way it has been played for the last 29 years of Jonker’s tenure.

Jonker’s 1989 team was her only other to finish with a sub-.500 record in the Mid-American Conference (15-17).

This year’s team already has set multiple unwelcome school records, including most losses (30), longest MAC losing streak (16 games and counting) and longest overall losing streak on two separate occasion (nine games and counting).

The Chippewas (9-30 overall, 1-16 MAC), picked to win their second consecutive MAC West title, lost four more on the road during the weekend – two at Northern Illinois and two at rival Western Michigan.

The only thing keeping CMU from a winless conference campaign is a 6-5 extra-inning win against Ball State on March 27.

It’s easy to point out the obvious losing streaks, but there a few key areas where the team has regressed since going 25-20 overall and 14-7 in the MAC West last year.

1. Batting average

This is perhaps the most noticeable and troubling for Jonker and her staff. CMU is batting just .225, compared to a .284 mark last season. The team’s opponents, meanwhile, have raised their average from .249 last season to .271 this season.

Just three players are batting more than .250, compared to nine who batted above that mark last season. No player has more than a .284 average – troubling when two returning players (Tracy Kaatz and Christina Novak) batted more than .320 last season.

Kaatz’s .360 mark led the team last season, but she was slowed by injury early on and is batting .284. Novak’s average has plummeted to .235 after she finished at .326 in 2008.

2. Pitching/loss of the ace

The loss of one player should not have this type of impact on a team.

But that’s the case after junior Kari Seddon went down before the season started when she needed Tommy John surgery to repair tendons in her pitching arm.

Seddon paced the pitching staff in 2008, recording four shutouts, 117 strikeouts and a 1.91 earned-run average in 24 games. She also played first base when she wasn’t pitching, and batted .259.

Seddon’s injury put all the pressure on senior Ali Pettit, who has performed admirably, recording a perfect game early. But the amount of innings she has already pitched (172) is too much of a load. She’s been forced to pitch in 31 of CMU’s 39 games, recording 21 complete games and a 2.48 ERA.

Although recovery time for softball pitchers is much less because of the natural throwing motion, it’s still a lot to handle for Pettit, who hasn’t had much run support (2.59 runs per game compared to 3.91 last season).

3. No home advantage?

Whatever the reason for the season’s struggles, expect Jonker to make some changes next year. She doesn’t like losing and is struggling to accept this season’s results.

Just a year after the stadium was named in her honor, the team only has three wins there. Fortunately, however, the team gets four more chances to win at home this weekend.

The games will likely reveal how much fight the team has left.

sports@cm-life.com