Defending national champ Gators on tap for women’s softball
The 2016 Winthrop softball has been released as the Eagles will play a 55-game schedule in 2016 featuring 22 home games.
The schedule features 10 teams that were in the Top 80 RPI in 2015, including defending national champion Florida. Of the Eagles 30 opponents, 11 were in the Top 100 RPI, seven teams that competed in the NCAA Softball Championship and three that finished in the Top 25.
“As always we’re playing the best possible schedule we can,” said Co-Head Coach Mark Cooke, in his 27th season at Winthrop. “We’re playing a competitive schedule before we get into conference play and that will give us a real idea of where we are.”
Winthrop will have just three home series in Big South play this season as they will welcome Radford (March 25-26), Coastal Carolina (April 9-10) and Charleston Southern (April 15-16). The Eagles will be on the road for conference series at Liberty (March 18-19), Campbell (April 22-23), Gardner-Webb (May 6-7) and Presbyterian College will be a split road series with a doubleheader on Mar. 23 and the single-game on April 20.
Winthrop’s Terry Field will be site of the 2016 Big South Conference Championship May 11-14. It will be the third time the Eagles have hosted the championship in the last seven seasons and the 14th time overall. Winthrop has been to the championship game of the tournament in four of the last five times the championship has been played on Terry Field.
Tennis
Winthrop’s women’s tennis team finds itself in a familiar position as the 2016 preseason favorite in the annual Big South Conference women’s tennis preseason poll of the league’s head coaches.
Coach Cid Carvalho’s Eagles, who have won a league-record 17 women’s tennis championships, claimed the top spot in the poll with five first-place votes and 92 points, ahead of Liberty, which garnered 84 points (two first-place votes). Defending conference champion Charleston Southern finished third in the poll with 83 points and two first-place nods.
Meanwhile, the men, under first-year head coach John Collins, have been picked to finish second behind defending regular-season champion Coastal Carolina and just ahead of third place Campbell in the annual Big South Conference men’s tennis preseason poll by the league’s head coaches.
This story was originally published January 16, 2016 at 8:43 PM with the headline "Defending national champ Gators on tap for women’s softball."