Boston College Athletics
Photo by: Amber Searls, theACC.com
May 07, 2024 | Softball, #ForBoston Files
BC's tenacity has diamond watchers asking, "Why Not Them?"
Amy Kvilhaug couldn't find the right words to describe how she felt following last weekend's one-run win over Louisville. So much of her 2024 season wrapped itself in a changed mentality that she hadn't truly thought about the differences between her Boston College "Team 41" softball team and the rest of her career, but the win over the Cardinals forced her to search her coaching soul for quantifying words to indescribable feelings. Four years after her first season ended with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, a coach who dedicated herself to flexibility within her team roster needed to find a way to appropriately capture a moment earned by the Eagles' overall effort.
She didn't want to double down on the difficulty associated with qualifying for postseason play, but the 4-3 victory over the Cardinals clinched the program's first trip to the ACC Tournament in six years. Savoring that return was paramount in her mind, but she also didn't want to up-play some type of aberration for an honor earned by the players and coaches who spiritually and emotionally constructed a playoff-caliber team.
The depth of that meaning gave her pause, but after thinking it over, Kvilhaug decided to simply identify the surface emotion as the realest, simplest and truest testament to a roster built by its dedication and skill.
"It's incredible because you have to in it to win it," she said. "[The ACC Tournament] allows you that gateway to the NCAA Tournament, so to have this opportunity to continue playing softball together as Team 41 is just awesome. I struggle with my words because I'm speechless about the journey that this year has been, but everybody worked hard by starting the conversation back during last May about what this program needed to do. We needed to be better for one another, and we put that plan in motion by making it part of our everyday language throughout the course of the year. We really embodied what we wanted to be about, and now those special moments along the way are rewarding us [with postseason play]."
The first round berth offers a glimpse into the elite strides taken by a BC team that lost 30-plus games in the first year after the COVID-19 cancellation. The steady improvement to a 20-win season in 2022 included a two-spot jump within the ACC, after which another modest jump moved the Eagles closer to a .500 overall record despite missing the postseason again with an identical six-win conference campaign.
In both years, BC finished one game away from qualifying for the conference tournament's 10-team field, but finding that extra win in the 13-team conference was difficult when the top six teams all advanced to the NCAA Tournament. The league regular season champion from each of those seasons was a top-10 team, and the number of host bids rivaled the best of the Big 12 and SEC despite placing a single team into the Women's College World Series in Oklahoma City.
Even this year, seven of the teams entering the postseason cracked 30 wins with two teams - Duke and Florida State - breaking the critical 40-win barrier needed for a run at one of the coveted top-eight national seeds. For BC, facing the Seminoles also occurred one weekend after a road trip to Virginia Tech, a 38-win team ranked right alongside FSU in most national projections, and separate series against Clemson and Virginia ensured the road to the ACC Tournament required wins over teams capable of competing deep into the May spring schedule.
"In the end, it's an honor to be in a position to play in the tournament," Kvilhaug said. "I think the cool thing about it is that we didn't have to sit around on Sunday scanning through results to see if we made it. We made it because we earned it. We took two [wins] at Notre Dame before taking care of business by winning two out of three games against Louisville, the same team that eliminated us [last year]. When you look at this league, Duke is one of the best teams in the country, Virginia Tech is one of the best teams in the country. We're dealing with top-10 RPI schools, and then schools like Virginia are hanging around in the top-20. It becomes a grind because we're all so good, but to become one of the 10 teams that are still playing requires some kudos. It's an honor just to be considered [for the postseason], but we know we're back in this tournament because people fought for it."
That battle included accomplishments that hadn't been seen in Chestnut Hill since the team played on the wetlands associated with Shea Field. The wins in South Bend were the first wins over the Fighting Irish since 2018 and included the first road wins at Notre Dame since the 2017 season with the first multi-win trip to Indiana since 1997. A 4-0 win in late March over Clemson was the first-ever victory over a Tiger program that won the first seven matchups against BC since its inception in 2020, and it came weeks after the team won its first game against Virginia in three years.
The nine league wins were the most since 2017's near-miss on the national tournament, and the 29 overall wins brought BC within Wednesday's ACC opener of winning 30 games for the first time in seven years. The three-way tie for eighth moved the team within a game of seventh place North Carolina, but sweeping the Cardinals wouldn't have helped avoid a first round matchup and a potential future game against either the Blue Devils or the Seminoles.
"We kept things in perspective," Kvilhaug said, "and really stuck with [the players] by having follow-up conversations or sidebars where we helped team them. Having perspective that if you don't win the game isn't the end of the world, we talked a lot about that [after getting swept] at Virginia Tech. We still went there to compete to win, but the chips didn't fall our way and we knew we'd be okay. We used it as education for scenarios to keep them loose, and at the end of the day, it allowed us to focus on one pitch at a time. We symbolized blinders, so the only thing we looked at was whatever was right in front of us."
Simplifying the game allowed BC to harness individual talent, but the byproduct produced some of the team's best individual seasons in recent memory. Hannah Slike's .357 average included more hits than all but four hitters in the league, and her 14 doubles finished sixth behind teammate Nicole Geary's league-leading 17 two-baggers. Teammates Makenna Segal and Elisabeth Laviolette subsequently finished among the league leaders in sacrifice bunts and hits-by-pitch.
Abby Dunning, meanwhile, established one of the team's most elite seasons in the circle with a 13-win campaign that held hitters to a .213 batting average behind a league-leading 164 strikeouts. Her 64 strikeouts via the backwards-K looking variety were 24 more than her closest competitor within the conference, and she later gained four saves on a staff that simultaneously featured 11-win Halie Pappion.
"I don't want to say that we're relaxed," Kvilhaug admitted, "but everyone is 0-0 right now because the next game that somebody loses could end a team's season. Because of that, everyone is 0-0 in the postseason, so that's just an opportunity within itself. The people that have shown that they're going to step up are stepping up after making it through the grind of the regular season, and now we're at a point where everybody is battle-tested. We've had our wars, and our battle wounds, and everybody's sore and tired. We're all going through the same boat of competing for the same thing, so now we're going to Durham where at the end of the day, we get to have a softball game. That's the opportunity where nobody is 'better' than anybody else right now."
That perspective is a requirement for a BC team that finds itself with the long road to the conference championship, but the Eagles find themselves sitting on an intriguing path to a deep postseason run if they can make it through their first game against Syracuse. Earlier this year, Team 41 swept a doubleheader against the Orange to win their series at the Harrington Athletics Village before Syracuse avoided a third game sweep by breaking a seven-game head-to-head losing streak.
Historic success against the Orange included a nine-game winning streak after Syracuse realigned into the ACC, but Wednesday is the first-ever postseason meeting between the teams despite a 21-13 series advantage for the Eagles. That said, Syracuse isn't exactly a stranger to postseason play, having qualified for the ACC Tournament in all but one season aside from the 2020 COVID cancellation after winning the 2010 and 2011 Big East championships.
The winner advances to a matchup with top-seeded Duke, but the No. 1 seed isn't a guaranteed ticket for the conference championship. In 2019, last year of divisional play saw top-seeded Virginia Tech drop its first game to eighth-seeded NC State, and two years later, top-seeded Clemson failed to advance to the conference championship after winning the COVID-impacted regular season crown.
"It's about paying attention to all of the little things," Kvilhaug said, "so I think that if we can get pitching and defense while keeping our bats [alive], our team can stay in the game as long as possible for those bats to figure out what to do. I hope that we have an offensive explosion like we did against Notre Dame, but that hasn't been our technical way. And that's fine. Our pitching and defense holds us in games, and then we figure out how to get stuff done."
BC and Syracuse kick off the 2024 ACC Softball Tournament on Wednesday afternoon at 1 p.m. from the Duke Softball Stadium in Durham, North Carolina. The game can be seen on the ACC Network with online streaming available through ESPN's family of online and mobile device apps.
She didn't want to double down on the difficulty associated with qualifying for postseason play, but the 4-3 victory over the Cardinals clinched the program's first trip to the ACC Tournament in six years. Savoring that return was paramount in her mind, but she also didn't want to up-play some type of aberration for an honor earned by the players and coaches who spiritually and emotionally constructed a playoff-caliber team.
The depth of that meaning gave her pause, but after thinking it over, Kvilhaug decided to simply identify the surface emotion as the realest, simplest and truest testament to a roster built by its dedication and skill.
"It's incredible because you have to in it to win it," she said. "[The ACC Tournament] allows you that gateway to the NCAA Tournament, so to have this opportunity to continue playing softball together as Team 41 is just awesome. I struggle with my words because I'm speechless about the journey that this year has been, but everybody worked hard by starting the conversation back during last May about what this program needed to do. We needed to be better for one another, and we put that plan in motion by making it part of our everyday language throughout the course of the year. We really embodied what we wanted to be about, and now those special moments along the way are rewarding us [with postseason play]."
The first round berth offers a glimpse into the elite strides taken by a BC team that lost 30-plus games in the first year after the COVID-19 cancellation. The steady improvement to a 20-win season in 2022 included a two-spot jump within the ACC, after which another modest jump moved the Eagles closer to a .500 overall record despite missing the postseason again with an identical six-win conference campaign.
In both years, BC finished one game away from qualifying for the conference tournament's 10-team field, but finding that extra win in the 13-team conference was difficult when the top six teams all advanced to the NCAA Tournament. The league regular season champion from each of those seasons was a top-10 team, and the number of host bids rivaled the best of the Big 12 and SEC despite placing a single team into the Women's College World Series in Oklahoma City.
Even this year, seven of the teams entering the postseason cracked 30 wins with two teams - Duke and Florida State - breaking the critical 40-win barrier needed for a run at one of the coveted top-eight national seeds. For BC, facing the Seminoles also occurred one weekend after a road trip to Virginia Tech, a 38-win team ranked right alongside FSU in most national projections, and separate series against Clemson and Virginia ensured the road to the ACC Tournament required wins over teams capable of competing deep into the May spring schedule.
"In the end, it's an honor to be in a position to play in the tournament," Kvilhaug said. "I think the cool thing about it is that we didn't have to sit around on Sunday scanning through results to see if we made it. We made it because we earned it. We took two [wins] at Notre Dame before taking care of business by winning two out of three games against Louisville, the same team that eliminated us [last year]. When you look at this league, Duke is one of the best teams in the country, Virginia Tech is one of the best teams in the country. We're dealing with top-10 RPI schools, and then schools like Virginia are hanging around in the top-20. It becomes a grind because we're all so good, but to become one of the 10 teams that are still playing requires some kudos. It's an honor just to be considered [for the postseason], but we know we're back in this tournament because people fought for it."
That battle included accomplishments that hadn't been seen in Chestnut Hill since the team played on the wetlands associated with Shea Field. The wins in South Bend were the first wins over the Fighting Irish since 2018 and included the first road wins at Notre Dame since the 2017 season with the first multi-win trip to Indiana since 1997. A 4-0 win in late March over Clemson was the first-ever victory over a Tiger program that won the first seven matchups against BC since its inception in 2020, and it came weeks after the team won its first game against Virginia in three years.
The nine league wins were the most since 2017's near-miss on the national tournament, and the 29 overall wins brought BC within Wednesday's ACC opener of winning 30 games for the first time in seven years. The three-way tie for eighth moved the team within a game of seventh place North Carolina, but sweeping the Cardinals wouldn't have helped avoid a first round matchup and a potential future game against either the Blue Devils or the Seminoles.
"We kept things in perspective," Kvilhaug said, "and really stuck with [the players] by having follow-up conversations or sidebars where we helped team them. Having perspective that if you don't win the game isn't the end of the world, we talked a lot about that [after getting swept] at Virginia Tech. We still went there to compete to win, but the chips didn't fall our way and we knew we'd be okay. We used it as education for scenarios to keep them loose, and at the end of the day, it allowed us to focus on one pitch at a time. We symbolized blinders, so the only thing we looked at was whatever was right in front of us."
Simplifying the game allowed BC to harness individual talent, but the byproduct produced some of the team's best individual seasons in recent memory. Hannah Slike's .357 average included more hits than all but four hitters in the league, and her 14 doubles finished sixth behind teammate Nicole Geary's league-leading 17 two-baggers. Teammates Makenna Segal and Elisabeth Laviolette subsequently finished among the league leaders in sacrifice bunts and hits-by-pitch.
Abby Dunning, meanwhile, established one of the team's most elite seasons in the circle with a 13-win campaign that held hitters to a .213 batting average behind a league-leading 164 strikeouts. Her 64 strikeouts via the backwards-K looking variety were 24 more than her closest competitor within the conference, and she later gained four saves on a staff that simultaneously featured 11-win Halie Pappion.
"I don't want to say that we're relaxed," Kvilhaug admitted, "but everyone is 0-0 right now because the next game that somebody loses could end a team's season. Because of that, everyone is 0-0 in the postseason, so that's just an opportunity within itself. The people that have shown that they're going to step up are stepping up after making it through the grind of the regular season, and now we're at a point where everybody is battle-tested. We've had our wars, and our battle wounds, and everybody's sore and tired. We're all going through the same boat of competing for the same thing, so now we're going to Durham where at the end of the day, we get to have a softball game. That's the opportunity where nobody is 'better' than anybody else right now."
That perspective is a requirement for a BC team that finds itself with the long road to the conference championship, but the Eagles find themselves sitting on an intriguing path to a deep postseason run if they can make it through their first game against Syracuse. Earlier this year, Team 41 swept a doubleheader against the Orange to win their series at the Harrington Athletics Village before Syracuse avoided a third game sweep by breaking a seven-game head-to-head losing streak.
Historic success against the Orange included a nine-game winning streak after Syracuse realigned into the ACC, but Wednesday is the first-ever postseason meeting between the teams despite a 21-13 series advantage for the Eagles. That said, Syracuse isn't exactly a stranger to postseason play, having qualified for the ACC Tournament in all but one season aside from the 2020 COVID cancellation after winning the 2010 and 2011 Big East championships.
The winner advances to a matchup with top-seeded Duke, but the No. 1 seed isn't a guaranteed ticket for the conference championship. In 2019, last year of divisional play saw top-seeded Virginia Tech drop its first game to eighth-seeded NC State, and two years later, top-seeded Clemson failed to advance to the conference championship after winning the COVID-impacted regular season crown.
"It's about paying attention to all of the little things," Kvilhaug said, "so I think that if we can get pitching and defense while keeping our bats [alive], our team can stay in the game as long as possible for those bats to figure out what to do. I hope that we have an offensive explosion like we did against Notre Dame, but that hasn't been our technical way. And that's fine. Our pitching and defense holds us in games, and then we figure out how to get stuff done."
BC and Syracuse kick off the 2024 ACC Softball Tournament on Wednesday afternoon at 1 p.m. from the Duke Softball Stadium in Durham, North Carolina. The game can be seen on the ACC Network with online streaming available through ESPN's family of online and mobile device apps.
Players Mentioned
RHP
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OF
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P
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1B
/ Softball
C/UTL
/ SoftballThursday, October 22
Thursday, October 22
Thursday, October 22
Thursday, October 22
