Two LSU softball pitchers have entered the portal: Raelin Chaffin & Emma Strood

Hopefully heavener is as good as advertised. She plus a big portal transfer and you have a top 8 staff…not that it matters when Howard Dobson is still around

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Morgan Smith transferred to Rutgers, this year she tore it up made all American teams. Maybe we have a developmental problem.

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Batted over .400 with 14 doubles 19 home runs and 60+ RBIs. But you are correct, development is the issue

Then you have this going on at UDUB

Less than a week after six top Washington softball players entered the transfer portal, starting catcher Sydney Stewart has also entered the portal, according to a report Tuesday from Justin McLeod of Softball America.

Stewart, a sophomore who started in 44 of UW's 47 games this season, emerged as one of Washington's better hitters, batting .321 with five home runs and 18 runs batted in.

Stewart's OPS (on base plus slugging percentage) of 1.006 was fourth on the team among players with more than five at-bats, and she also had seven stolen bases, tied for fourth-best on the team.


Stewart's departure leaves sophomore outfielder Brooklyn Carter and freshman infielder Giselle Alvarez as the only two position players who started more than half the games this season who have not entered the portal or are graduating.
Also......

Why did 8 top UW softball players enter the transfer portal?
May 29, 2024 at 6:00 am Updated May 29, 2024 at 6:22 pm
By Scott Hanson
Seattle Times staff reporter
The news late last week that six of Washington’s top softball players had entered the NCAA transfer portal was certainly surprising, and two more have reportedly joined them.

Heather Tarr, in her 20 seasons as UW coach, has overseen one of the best and most stable softball programs in the country, winning the Women’s College World Series in 2009, reaching the eight-team WCWS eight times and never missing the NCAA tournament.

Husky stars seemed to always stay four years, and in recent years many stayed a fifth when given an extra year of eligibility because of the pandemic.

THE LATEST UW SOFTBALL NEWS
UW softball’s Sydney Stewart reportedly becomes 7th player in transfer portal
Six top UW softball players reportedly entering transfer portal
So why did junior infielder Kinsey Fiedler, junior shortstop Rylee Holtorf, sophomore utility player Alana Johnson, junior catcher Olivia Johnson, sophomore pitcher Ruby Meylan and freshman pitcher Sidne Peters enter the portal last week?

Why did sophomore catcher Sydney Stewart and sophomore outfielder Brooklyn Carter join them in the transfer portal Wednesday, according to Softball America and DI Softball?

Tarr declined to be interviewed for this story but said in a statement: “UW softball has amassed 32 years of success as a program. Transitions in this day and age are tough, but we are excited for the future of Husky softball.”

Tarr was interviewed on KJR-FM (93.3) on Wednesday afternoon and said she believed there were “various” reasons the seven players entered the transfer portal.

“I think everybody’s got their own reasons nowadays,” she said. “It’s somewhat on trend to get involved in the recruiting scene again, or think about what might be or, ‘Maybe this place wasn’t for me.’ There’s tons of different reasons. I can’t source it, unfortunately, and I wish I had an answer for everybody, even myself.”

Though the landscape in college sports has changed with the transfer portal and money from NIL (name, image and likeness) compensation, the Huskies have taken by far the hardest hit when it comes to players entering the transfer portal.

In Softball America’s list of the top 35 players in the portal as of Monday, Washington had six on the list. Ole Miss, which fired its coach after this past season, had three. No other team had more than two.

The players have not shared publicly why they have entered the portal.

Holtorf didn’t address why in an Instagram post Monday in which she said, “Thankful for all the memories, experiences, and people I have gained throughout my time spent at UW and I’m excited for whatever is to come next!! I have decided to enter the transfer portal and trusting God with this next chapter and one last softball season.”

Fiedler also didn’t address why on a short Instagram post announcing she was transferring.

The remaining players have not publicly posted about entering the portal on their social-media accounts. Fiedler and Alana Johnson did not respond to messages asking if they would comment.

Repeated requests to speak with Tarr have not been granted. A request to talk to UW athletic administration did not receive a reply.

So speculation will continue.

Justin McLeod, associate editor and writer for D1 Softball, who broke the news of the first six Huskies entering the portal, said the only similar situations he could think of were at Oregon in 2018, when coach Mike White left for Texas, and in 2022 when Alabama had six players enter the portal after a disappointing season.

“It’s rare to see a program built the way that UW is to have players like that go into the portal,” McLeod said. “Every program has players that go into the portal, players that maybe don’t play a lot, fourth-string pitchers, backup infielders, pinch-runners, things like that. But when you get to impact players, it’s always a little bit of a cause for pause, because it’s like, why?”

McLeod does not think the why has anything to do with speculation Tarr might take another job, and Tarr told KJR that she has no intention of leaving the school where she played.

“To me, it looks like there’s some kind of divide somewhere,” McLeod said. “I don’t want to speak out of school and say I know this to be that, but in the history since the portal started [in 2018], when a group of star players goes into the portal, there’s always something behind it beyond just, ‘I don’t like where I’m at.’ “

McLeod said he was surprised to see the exodus at Washington because Tarr has been successful at recruiting players who gravitate to her style of coaching.

McLeod said rumors often start when a team is less successful than predicted. UW (32-15) lost six of its last seven games and was knocked out in the NCAA regional.

“There were some rumblings, sure,” McLeod said. “But I didn’t expect this because Heather builds a program a certain way, and she grabs players that fit that mold. … I don’t know what that reason is, but it looks to me pretty clear that there’s a reason this group is in the portal.”

The Huskies lost two players after last season — Jadelyn Allchin and Kelley Lynch — who graduated after playing for four years. McLeod said graduate transfers such as those are pretty common.
“But this feels completely different,” he said of the players in the portal.

The Huskies will need to do a major rebuild if the players in the portal do not elect to return to UW, which they would be allowed to do.

Tarr, who made a pitch on KJR for more NIL money for Husky players, said in the radio interview she hopes some players in the portal return to UW.

If not, the Huskies could enter their first season in the Big Ten Conference without a pitcher who has thrown in college and without almost all of their top hitters from last season.

“It doesn’t look good for UW going forward, just because that’s so many impact players,” McLeod said. “I don’t want to call it catastrophic in the sense that the program is going to end, but it’s pretty catastrophic when you could go into next year thinking you’ve got pieces to build around. Well, now your ace [Meylan] is gone, your starting shortstop is gone, and all these impact players are gone.”

Scott Hanson: shanson@seattletimes.com;

But why would they come here?

Morgan Smith is a talented player. But if I remember correctly, at the end of the season (her freshman year), Smith was getting consistent ABs and then decided to enter the transfer portal. Also remember the Big10 is nowhere near as good of a softball conference as the SEC. The Big10 had a whopping ZERO top 16 seeds. Not one team made it out of regionals. Rutgers hasn’t made the tournament in years. Its a step down in competition for sure. But glad Morgan Smith was successful in her senior year of softball.

She was good enough to hit but she was also a pitcher and not good enough to get consistent innings in the SEC. She wasn't getting over 100 innings at a better program and being able to do both probably contributed some to why she was at Rutgers.

Doucet has an interview up with torina on wafb
I really think she has a hard time balancing coaching with her family time with her kids

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Morgan would have been a nice player to have in lineup Torina needs to be looking for an exit strategy and so does her staff because lsu not gonna fire her

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You can look for Scott to let her coach these final two years of her contract. In 2025, they will come up with some heart warming story that “Beth is retiring to spend more time with her family.” Of course, when she takes a mid-major or weak P4 job in 2026, then hey, everybody has the right to change their mind, don’t they? The timing may be right for her to take over NC State after Leftwich is fired.

Now it could get interesting and force Scott’s hand if Torina insists on an extension using the old bromide, “I can’t recruit with an expiring contract!”