Corky: Talking-to ignited champions
by Corky Simpson on Jun. 07, 2006, under Sports
Arizona pitcher Alicia Hollowell hoists the national championship trophy after beating Northwestern 5-0 Tuesday.
A strange team that had trouble getting traction early in the season has roared past the finish line to a national championship.
A masterful job of coaching by Mike Candrea and the ironwoman pitching of Alicia Hollowell led Arizona to its seventh NCAA softball championship.
On a warm spring night in Oklahoma City, the Wildcats hammered Northwestern 5-0 for the national title Tuesday.
It was the second blowout by the Cats in the best-of-three championship series against Northwestern. Arizona clobbered the purple Wildcats 8-0 Monday night.
Hollowell, a senior and four-time all-American from Suisun, Calif., promised Candrea a national championship when she signed to attend Arizona.
Tuesday night, she kept the promise.
The tall right-hander pitched all six games at the Women’s College World Series, won five of them and set a strikeout record. She fanned 13 Northwestern batters last night, running her WCWS total to 64.
Fittingly, she whiffed the final batter, Jamie Dotson.
A month ago, when the Tucson Wildcats were struggling, Candrea read his players the riot act, and they proceeded to rumble to a national championship.
He placed the fate of his ball team on the strong shoulders of Hollowell, and she delivered, big time.
In the championship game, Hollowell twice battled out of bases-loaded situations. In the third inning, with Arizona leading 1-0, the first three Northwestern batters singled.
But Hollowell worked out of the jam with a strikeout, pop-up and outfield fly.
In the seventh, Northwestern’s Wildcats loaded the sacks again with two away.
Hollowell then struck out Dotson for the national championship.
When you think back to all the national championships at UA – Candrea’s in the WCWS, three in baseball under Jerry Kindall and the 1997 NCAA basketball crown under Lute Olson, for example – the teams had one common thread:
Grit.
This softball team finished 54-11, but in mid-April nobody could imagine the Cats would win the national championship.
Candrea summoned the troops and told them they were dillydallying, slothful and lazy. Not only that, the man who coached Team USA to the gold medal in softball at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens told the Wildcats he was so frustrated that he was considering walking away from the sport.
Mike knew his kids had it in them – if they could just find it.
From that point on, the Wildcats couldn’t be stopped in their quest for the first national championship at Arizona since 2001.
They found their traction and left tire marks on the rest of collegiate softball.
Arizona beats Northwestern 8-0
UA softball heads to World Series
Arizona beat Lousiana State at Hillenbrand Stadium Saturday night in the third and final game of a best-of-three super regional. LSU won the second game, 3-2, and Arizona won the third game 14-5 to advance to the 2006 World Series in Oklahoma City.
Producer: Val Canez
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