Softball season kicks off Friday

The Montana softball team will open its 2019 season this weekend when the Grizzlies travel to California to play five games in three days at the NorCal Kickoff, a tournament co-hosted by UC Davis and Sacramento State.

Montana will play four games against Santa Clara, UC Davis and UC Santa Barbara on Friday and Saturday at UC Davis's La Rue Field, then face Cal State Bakersfield on Sunday at Sacramento State's Shea Stadium.

The schedule:

Friday, 10:30 a.m. (MT) -- Montana vs. Santa Clara (at UCD)
Friday, 1 p.m. (MT) -- Montana at UC Davis
Saturday, 10:30 a.m. (MT) -- Montana vs. UC Santa Barbara (at UCD)
Saturday, 1 p.m. (MT) -- Montana at UC Davis
Sunday, 10:30 a.m. (MT) -- Montana vs. Cal State Bakersfield (at SAC)

Coverage: Live stats are available for all five games, with additional video coverage of Montana's two games against UC Davis.

Upcoming: This is the first of five early-season tournaments for Montana, which will make future trips to Las Cruces, N.M., back-to-back trips to the Bay Area and a final trip to Fresno, Calif. If all goes according to plan, the Grizzlies will have played 25 games by the time the home opener arrives on March 16.

At a glance (Montana): The Grizzlies went 25-30 last season and finished fifth in the Big Sky at 10-11. Montana, which lost 11 seniors off that team, was picked fourth in the preseason Big Sky Conference poll, behind Sacramento State, Weber State and Portland State.

The team's experience comes at pitcher, where seniors Colleen Driscoll and Maddy Stensby, junior Michaela Hood and sophomore Tristin Achenbach are back for a staff that had a 3.08 ERA last spring.

At a glance (Santa Clara): The Broncos went 9-37 last season, 4-11 in West Coast Conference games to tie for fourth. Santa Clara was picked for a fifth-place finish in the six-team WCC this year. Junior catcher Hannah Russell, who batted .331 as a sophomore, is coming off a first-team All-WCC season.

At a glance (UC Davis): The Aggies went 27-24 last season, the most wins for the program since moving up to Division I in 2008, and were picked third out of eight teams in the Big West preseason poll. Sophomore pitcher Brooke Yanez had a 1.75 ERA last season and was named NFCA All-Pacific Region.

At a glance (UC Santa Barbara): The Gauchos went 20-34 last season, 7-14 in league, and were picked to finish eighth out of eight teams this season in the Big West. Senior second baseman Sierra Altmeyer was voted All-Big West as a freshman (second team), sophomore (first team) and junior (second team).

At a glance (Cal State Bakersfield): The Roadrunners went 6-38 last season and were picked for a seventh-place finish in the seven-team WAC in the preseason poll. Cal State Bakersfield opened last season 1-17 and ended the year with a team ERA of 5.39 and team batting average of .229.

History: Montana has gone 5-3 against this week's opponents in its four-year history. The Grizzlies are 3-0 against Santa Clara, 1-1 against UC Davis and 1-2 against Cal State Bakersfield. Montana and UC Santa Barbara will be meeting for the first time.

The Grizzlies opened the 2016 season, their second, at a UC Davis tournament. They went 3-2, with wins over UC Davis, Santa Clara and Cal State Bakersfield.

Of added note: Sunday's game against Bakersfield on Sacramento State's home field will give Montana's newcomers, and there are a handful of them, a fourth regular-season game this season at what will be the site of the Big Sky Conference tournament in May.

The Grizzlies will play a three-game series against the defending Big Sky champion Hornets at Shea Stadium in early April.

Griz Insider:

Opening weekends are always tough in softball, if only because Montana is going to play five games in three days this weekend against four teams the Grizzlies know very little about.

Sure, there are some knowns, like the opposing players listed above, but no team is ever the same from season to season, no matter how many returners are back.

"We'll have some scouting reports, but it's really scouts from last year," said second-year coach Melanie Meuchel. "A lot can change, so we're just trying to take some tendencies of the teams' upperclassmen.

"Teams change. One year they're playing with a little more power, the next year they might have a little more speed. So opening weekend can be hard to prep for."

And good luck to the teams facing Montana. They'll know, for the most part, what they're getting with the Grizzly pitching staff, but as for everyone else? Who are these people?

That's what happens when a program graduates 11 off the roster, as Montana did last spring, and has seven newcomers among the 16 players on the team.

Of the nine returners, four are pitchers and only junior Anne Mari Petrino and sophomore Jessica McAlister started more than half the team's games last spring.

Juniors Kylie Hayton and Morgan Johnson, and sophomore Lexie Knauss? Thirty-six games started between them last season with 125 at-bats.

Johnson batted .100 last spring, Knauss .077, but given a chance to play a larger role in the fall, both batted over .300 in six exhibition games and both had home runs.

"Teams will find true stats on Anne Mari and Jessica, but other players we have returning didn't have as many opportunities," said Meuchel.

"It will be fun to see everyone settle into positions and roles that they haven't always experienced in their time at Montana."

As expected, Montana won all six of its games in the fall, batting .381 as a team and finishing with a staff ERA of 0.67, with 57 strikeouts in 42 innings.

Freshman catcher McKenna Tjaden batted .556 in five games played, sophomore first baseman Cami Sellers, a transfer from Boston College, hit .526, with a team-high 10 hits in six games.

Freshman outfielder Brooklyn Weisgram and freshman infielder Maygen McGrath hit better than .400, with both belting home runs. Weisgram went yard against MSU Billings, McGrath against Providence.

"It will be fun to get on the field. It's been a while since the fall," said Meuchel. "We're a work in progress, but I think the fall gave us an idea of where we're starting, and we're in a good spot.

"We won't be defined by what we do this weekend or next weekend, but it will give us a good look at where we're at and where we need to push a little bit more."

Montana's position of experience and strength will be inside the circle. Michaela Hood was first-team All-Big Sky and MVP of the league tournament as a freshman. An injury limited her to just 17 starts last season, only three of which came after April 1.

Colleen Driscoll made a team-high 19 starts last spring and won eight games while putting together an ERA of 2.62, which ranked third in the Big Sky behind Sacramento State's Celina Mathias and North Dakota's Kaylin VanDomelen.

Maddy Stensby and Tristin Achenbach have accounted for all three of the no-hitters thrown in program history.

All four pitchers got at least one start in the fall and all of them made one or more relief appearance.

"They are all starters, but I feel like they could all come in and shut someone down if they had to as well," said Meuchel.

"Everyone had great starts in the fall, and when I put them in at the end (of games), they did what they needed to do to close the game out. They gave us a different look than the pitcher they were coming in for."

For this weekend's games, Meuchel doesn't have a set plan for how to use her staff but all four will likely see plenty of batters.

"We play UC Davis twice, so after the first game we'll get a feel for their style of hitting and see which pitcher matches up best against them," she said.

"As the weekend goes along, we'll be able to scout the other teams a little bit and make our decisions based on that."

Most important for this weekend: softball is back, and Montana will get to play games in a location that does not include snowbanks surrounding the fields.

"We haven't been on dirt yet. We've been on our (artificial-surface) field, but it's been a little hard and icy for our players to really get after it 100 percent," Meuchel said.

"Our goal for this weekend is to show some comfort in how we're playing and to play hard and play with a lot of knowledge of the game, play heady and play a little bit free."

Next Event

Players Mentioned

Tristin Achenbach

Colleen Driscoll

Kylie Hayton

Michaela Hood

Morgan Johnson

Jessica McAlister

Maygen McGrath

Anne Mari Petrino

Cami Sellers

Maddy Stensby

McKenna Tjaden

Brooklyn Weisgram

University of Montana Athletics