ASHLAND – The Southern Oregon softball team finishes out its nonconference schedule this weekend in Medford hosting the annual SOU Tournament Friday and Saturday night at US Cellular Fields.

Southern Oregon, 3-5 overall this season, will host the six-team tournament with a total of 15 games scheduled for the two days. Fellow Cascade Collegiate Conference schools Oregon Tech and Concordia will come to town, along with nonconference schools British Columbia, Holy Names and Simpson.

The Raiders will look to bounce back from a rough weekend down in California, where they dropped both games in a doubleheader 5-1 to William Jessup. While the team was hoping for better results on the scoreboard, SOU head coach Kim Fritts believes SOU can learn from the experience and move forward on Friday.

“Taking into account what we learned from last Saturday, we're hopefully going to build on that and come through with a strong weekend,” Fritts said.

While the weather forecast threatens the possibility of frigid temperatures and snowy skies, the tournament is set to use three fields for two sets of games on Friday and three more on Saturday. Southern Oregon will face British Columbia and Simpson on Friday, with games against Holy Names Simpson and UBC scheduled for Saturday. Games will begin at 3 p.m. on Friday and 10:30 a.m. on Saturday.

Julia Willison (Reno, Nevada/McQueen) leads the team with a .333 batting average through eight games this year. She also tops the team leaderboard in slugging (.500) and on base percentage (.429), along with runs batted in (six). Alexa Gonzalez (Menifee, Calif./Heritage) has scored a team-best five runs. In the pitching circle, Sydney White (Clovis, Calif./Clovis West) has tallied a 3.5 earned run average and a 2-1 record in three games, striking out 17 batters with only two walks.

The Raiders defeated Simpson 7-5 a couple weeks ago at the Simpson Tournament in Redding and will face Holy Names and British Columbia for the first time this season. Southern Oregon is 5-2 all-time against Holy Names, including an 8-5 win last season, and the Raiders have never faced British Columbia.

With the tournament serving as the final games in the nonconference season and conference play beginning in two weeks, the Raiders will use this weekend as an opportunity to finish nonconference play on a positive note. It will be the first time this season that SOU will compete in the Rogue Valley, with the first official home games scheduled for March 15 and 16 against Northwest and Concordia.

“Hopefully we're going to walk away with a few big wins here this weekend heading into conference play in two weeks,” Fritts said. “We're going to take the things that we have figured out that we need to work on the last few weeks, get those taken care of this weekend and get ready to head into conference play.”