UCLA’s road to Oklahoma City, and the Women’s College World Series, begins in Easton Stadium on Friday night.
Although Oklahoma City is the Bruins’ ultimate destination, the team is well aware of the downfalls that can come from looking too far ahead.
In each of the past three seasons, the Bruins have failed to advance past the regional round of the NCAA tournament, in part because they looked too far ahead instead of focusing on the game at hand.
“Last year, I was focused more on the big picture of postseason instead of each individual game,” said sophomore outfielder Allexis Bennett.
This postseason drought has set the stage for an unprecedented event in UCLA softball history: If No. 3-seeded UCLA (48-6) fails to reach the College World Series again this year, it will be the first time ever that a UCLA softball senior class has failed to reach the College World Series at least once in four years.
To prevent this scenario from happening, a few UCLA players said that they needed to ignore the talk about Oklahoma City and focus more on one game at a time, starting with their first regional game against Southern Utah (23-29) on Friday night.
“We are going to mainly focus on Southern Utah,” said freshman shortstop Delaney Spaulding. “We play Southern Utah Friday night at 6 o’clock. We do not know who we play, if we play or what time we play Saturday and Sunday.”
Spaulding, who will be playing in the postseason for the first time, said that she has talked with her veteran teammates about what has prevented them from advancing past the regional round in each of the past three seasons.
“They’ve told (the freshmen) how it works and what has not worked for them previously in the years,” Spaulding said. “What they told (the freshmen) is that we worry about Southern Utah Friday night at 6 o’clock and that’s it.”
Similar to Spaulding, Bennett is taking a game-at-a-time approach to the postseason as well.
“This year, I’m focusing more on the day and the game itself instead of the big picture,” Bennett said. “There’s steps to get (to Oklahoma City), you can’t just jump to the top.”
In addition to focusing on one game at a time, junior catcher Stephany LaRosa also said that the Bruins need to treat Friday like just another game.
“I think we’re trying not to make it bigger than it is; it’s just another game,” LaRosa said. “Yeah, it may have a lot more riding on the line, but still, (it’s) the exact same game we grew up playing that we have been playing for the last couple months now.”
Although the Bruins are taking the postseason one game at a time, the fact is that they will be playing many games this weekend. After the Southern Utah game on Friday, UCLA will play either Notre Dame or Long Beach State on Saturday, and then another game on Sunday. If the Bruins lose two games this weekend, they will be eliminated from the postseason.