South Carolina Softball Coach Reflects on Record-Setting Regular Season Debut
This season, Ashley Chastain Woodard and the South Carolina Gamecocks have been a pleasant surprise.
The Gamecocks (39-14, 13-11) were projected to finish last in the Southeastern Conference according to the preseason standings. However, that is definitely not the case after finishing with a winning record in SEC play for the first time since 2018.
South Carolina's first-year head coach also made history by breaking Judy Martino's 1979 program record for wins as a first-year coach.
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“It’s been a dream to be here and just to have a successful first season is something I’m really grateful for,” Chastain Woodard told Michael Sauls of The State. “It definitely is an accumulation of everyone that’s been involved, not just me. Everyone that took a chance on us last summer, all the players that came in, the staff that believed in me and just the vision of where we wanted to take the program and the brand.”
The Gamecocks will enter the SEC Tournament as a No. 7 seed and will face the winner of No. 10 seed Alabama and No. 15 seed Auburn in the second round.
"The league was so good this year,” Chastain Woodard added. “It was so tight, it was coming down to this last weekend for so many of us that were tied kind of in the middle for the last couple weeks."
The head coach isn't wrong. South Carolina earned the No. 7 seed over Mississippi State after a third-round tiebreaker. Both teams finished conference play 13-11, and both were swept by Oklahoma, which led to the third tiebreaker: runs allowed against common opponents.
The Gamecocks and Bulldogs had five common opponents in Oklahoma, Alabama, Ole Miss, Kentucky and Auburn. The Gamecocks allowed 59 runs across 15 games against these teams, while the Bulldogs allowed 65.
South Carolina's postseason opener is slated for approximately 8 p.m. ET on Wednesday and will air on the SEC Network.
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-1d7db99dccc9abef7b9378f016b22b68.webp "Maren Angus-Coombs")
Maren Angus-Coombs was born in Los Angeles and raised in Nashville, Tenn. She is a graduate of Middle Tennessee State University and has been a sports writer since 2008. She has been covering college softball since 2016 for various outlets including Softball America, ESPNW and Hurrdat Sports. She is currently the managing editor of Softball On SI and also serves as an analyst for Nebraska softball games on Nebraska Public Media and B1G+.