NAIA SOFTBALL WORLD SERIES
South Commons Softball Complex | Columbus, Georgia
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ASHLAND – Southern Oregon won't be regarded as a typical No. 10 seed when the 43rd NAIA Softball World Series begins this week at the South Commons Softball Complex in Columbus, Georgia.

Seeking its fourth national title in five years, defending champion SOU (40-17 overall) plays the first game of the 10-team, double-elimination tournament at 7 a.m. PDT Thursday against No. 7 Jessup (Calif.) (39-10). The Raiders' shortest path to another championship is five consecutive wins; if they lose their opener, they'd need to win seven straight elimination games.

They played their best softball of the season as one of three No. 2 seeds that advanced out of the Opening Rounds along with seven No. 1 seeds, sweeping through the Indianapolis Bracket to reach the World Series for the sixth time in team history. The Raiders have made each of their appearances under three-time NAIA Coach of the Year Jessica Pistole, who brought them for the first time in 2017 and has never won fewer than two games at the final site.

TOURNAMENT TRIVIA:

• A No. 10 seed has yet to win the World Series since the tournament went to a 10-team format in 2013, though two of them – Spring Hills (Ala.) in 2013 and Columbia (Mo.) in 2018 – reached the final round. The last team ranked outside of the top-10 to win it was No. 18 Oregon Tech in 2011, and the last team outside of the top-five to win it was No. 10 Shorter (Ga.) in 2012.
• Only three teams in tournament history have claimed at least three titles: Oklahoma City (11), Simon Fraser (B.C.) (4) and SOU (3). Only three more have won at least two. The lone instance of a school winning four championships over a five-year stretch, as the Raiders are attempting to do, was Oklahoma City's four-peat from 1994-97.
• Last spring, SOU became the first team with a double-digit loss total in 10 years to capture the championship.
• The teams with the best records at the World Series since the Raiders made their debut in 2017: SOU (20-6), Oklahoma City (14-4), Science & Arts (Okla.) (10-6) and Oregon Tech (9-8).
• Since 2017, the Raiders are 22-3 in national tournament elimination games. They haven't played one since last year's Opening Round; they went 4-0 at the World Series with the top run differential (35-2) ever among teams that have gone undefeated at the final site. They're working on an active 11-game national tournament winning streak.
• The Raiders are 9-4 all-time against teams seeded higher than them at the World Series.
• The top seed in the bracket, Our Lady of the Lake (Texas), didn't make its World Series debut until last year, when the Saints went two-and-out as the No. 2 seed.

SCOUTING JESSUP: Fourteen years after Pistole was Jessup's head coach during the program's inaugural season, the Warriors are in the World Series for the first time ahead of their move to the NCAA Division II level in 2024-25. On opening day they logged the two highest run totals SOU has allowed this season, winning 12-8 and 9-8 before entering the rankings and eventually taking the Golden State Athletic Conference regular-season title with a 15-5 record. Sarah Giles, their senior first baseman, is a favorite to receive the NAIA Player of the Year award: the GSAC MVP is batting .565 with a cartoonish .690 on-base percentage and ranks among the country's top-three in both home runs (18) and RBIs (69). Two more big bats, Madison Leffle (.435, 52 SB) and Maddy Ybarra (.368, 14 HR, 55 RBI), make the top half of Jessup's lineup as scary as anyone's at the tourney. The Warriors' probable starter is Katie Blankenheim, another All-GSAC senior who enters at 15-5 with a 2.60 ERA. She pitches to contact, averaging just 2.6 strikeouts per seven innings and playing to a defense that has struggled at times with 83 errors. SOU leads the all-time series, 19-16.

SOU SHORT HOPS:

• Three-time All-CCC pitcher Katie Machado (25-5, 1.69 ERA) is up to 26 complete games with nine in her last 10 starts. She threw three more in the Opening Round, where she allowed two earned runs over 21 innings. Including the CCC Tournament, the senior is 6-1 with a 1.65 ERA over 46 2/3 frames this postseason. Machado has not allowed more than three earned runs in a start since her season debut against Jessup.
• In addition to serving as the linchpin of SOU's stellar defense, junior shortstop Sammie Pemberton is 11-for-26 this postseason, leading the Raiders in hits, extra-base hits (4) and RBIs (6) with five multi-hit efforts in eight games.
• Also in postseason play, the first two batters in SOU's order, Faith Moultrie and Kailer Fulton, are a combined 18-for-46 with 15 runs scored and 10 stolen bases on as many tries.
• SOU's lineup is less conventional than the high-powered one that batted .396 at last year's World Series. One illustration of this is that its All-CCC first-team selections, catcher Piper Love (.381, 21 XBH) and first baseman Jordan Henderson (.368, 22 XBH), have regularly been in the bottom half of the order since the CCC Tournament championship in an effort to balance it out. Still, despite graduating six regulars from 2023, the Raiders have produced the 12th-most runs per game (6.3) in the NAIA.
• Hannah Clavelle, an All-CCC third baseman, recently moved to the No. 3 spot in the lineup and is working on a 13-game on base streak. She is 8-for-22 with seven walks and six RBIs in postseason play, and leads the Raiders overall with 44 RBIs.
• Gold Glove center fielder Sarah Kerling was named to the World Series All-Tournament team in 2023, when she went 7-for-10 with five runs scored and had a four-hit game against OIT.
• The Raiders were 1-9 against nationally-ranked opponents until four weeks ago. Since then, they've notched six wins against top-10 squads.

IF THEY WIN: The SOU-Jessup winner moves on to play No. 2 seed Oklahoma City at 1 p.m. PDT Friday in the second round. The Stars (52-3 overall) won the championship in 2022 before missing last year's World Series. They measure out as the best team on paper at the tournament – topping the NAIA in nearly every offensive category, including batting average (.409) and home runs (61), and sporting a microscopic team 0.93 team ERA with 25 shutouts. They won the Sooner Athletic Conference with a 35-1 record and last met SOU in the 2019 final round, where they dropped the winner-take-all finale 8-3.

IF THEY LOSE: The SOU-Jessup loser plays its first elimination game at 10 a.m. PDT Friday, meeting the loser of another first-round game between No. 3 seed Central Methodist (Mo.) (52-5) and No. 6 seed Science & Arts (Okla.) (47-7). Whoever survives will play again at 10 a.m. PDT Saturday before an off day Sunday.