VIRGINIA BEACH, VA (WTKR)- Virginia Wesleyan head softball coach Brandon Elliott held back tears after the Marlins' Super Regional win last Friday. Now he'll see if his team can take it a little bit further.
VWU departs for Marshall, Texas, early Tuesday morning as one of eight teams in the Division III Women's College World Series. It's been a whirlwind for the group since the start of the NCAA Tournament and the players think things will start to sink in upon their arrival in the Lone Star State.
"When we leave in the morning, we'll be on our way to Texas and it'll be real and it'll be kind of like settling in," said sophomore pitcher and infielder Haley Sadler. "A lot of us are packing stuff now, so it's starting to sink in a little bit more, but it will definitely hit when we get there."
"We've been so wrapped up in playing and just moving forward inch-by-inch because every game could be your last," sophomore outfielder Sarah Prosser added. "We're one of the last eight teams left and we're competing for a national championship."
The Marlins are getting it done at the right time. After sweeping its regional with three victories over Eastern Connecticut State and Lebanon Valley, Virginia Wesleyan took two in a row from Muskingum last week to win the Super Regional. A squad that's been bitten by the injury bug and faced plenty of adversity throughout the season is seeing what it's capable of as close to full strength as it's been in 2024.
"We had a lot of trouble, a lot of hardships in the beginning of the season with injuries and things maybe not going the way that we wanted them to," Prosser noted. "In a way, I think maybe those injuries helped us a little bit because it gave some new people some chances."
"We've definitely been able to get more into it and get some more of our players back that have been battling injuries," added Sadler. "Everything is starting to mesh at the right time and the right place and we're really excited."
Virginia Wesleyan is aiming to win its fourth national title since 2017, its last coming in 2021. Most of the roster was not on the team during the Marlins' last run and now they're looking forward to writing their own chapter of the program's legacy.
"It means the world to us, just to have the opportunity to go and experience this," Sadler said. "To bring it home again, we'd kind of get to become a part of that history that we've heard so much about and we'd get to add another [banner] on the padded wall."
"It's different once you get here and you're actually experience those things, rather than just having the idea in the back of your mind that maybe you could get there," pointed out Prosser. "I think it's just been really special, being able to be a part of the team that I've looked up to and I've seen them, when I was in high school, win the national championship, so it's really special to be in those shoes of what I've looked up to in the past."
Virginia Wesleyan is the No. 5 seed of the eight teams making up the World Series field and will open against Wisconsin-Oshkosh on Thursday at 2:30 PM Eastern.
