re: Torina will now have made the WCWS 4 times in 13 years at LSU

Hey Beth, Mike Martin says hello.

She will be fired at some point not quick enough for some but it’s coming.

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Torina will now have made the WCWS 4 times in 13 years at LSU
Geauxgurt
with her last coming 7 years ago. She is what she is, and a championship coach she is not.

No SEC conference titles.
No SEC Tournament titles.

Again, given the resources available to her, she has done nothing of note when it comes to the post-season and even with a bunch of regular season wins, she has never won anything of value either.

You can continue to support her and mediocrity, but LSU needs a change.

Football, Women's Basketball, Baseball, Gymnastics and Men's T&F have all won National titles since the last time Torina's team even made the WCWS for goodness sake.

But keep on pumping her up.

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Agree with everything you wrote here. Is LSU content to have “good” seasons are do these young women deserve the coach that makes championships a real possibility? Torina has not done that on either a conference or national level in the past seven years. I think she started out and had a good run for some years but still never brought any titles to the young women who played for her. Time to scour the country and find the best possible candidate. With OU and Texas coming in, it’s only going to get tougher in the conference and may push some SEC teams out of the tournament with added losses to those teams. I think someone said she’s got two years left on her contract. I think it’s worth it to buy her out to give some of these these players a real shot while they’re still here.

Edit: According to the Tuscaloosa News salary rankings, Torina makes 430k/yr. 5th highest in the conference.

LINK

has beth made the WCWS 5 outta the last 6 years? like Kenny G?
a simple yes or no will do.

oh and F stanford. hope they get their arse kicked next game

Maybe we can raid the Washington Huskies softball portal entries:

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;

She’s a great coach

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another contributor

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Strood has thrown 12 innings in two years.

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The competition in softball isn’t where it is in baseball for damn sure.

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All 13 SEC teams made the NCAA tournament and 7 of the 16 Super Regional teams were from the SEC. The conference is stronger in baseball, but there are few other sports where the conference is as strong as it is in softball. Alabama went 10-14 in conference and made the WCWS.

Torina has failed to get to 6 straight WCWS, which is cause for concern, but they were as good as all but the top 2 or 3 teams this year. Failing to get over the hump was disappointing and should have her on the hot seat, but the program really isn’t that far off from where it needs to be. Going 5-4 against WCWS teams and 11-9 against Super Regional teams demonstrates that. I’m perfectly comfortable with the suggestion made by others to let the last two years of her contract play out, then let her go if she continues to fail to produce.

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Wouldn't be surprised If Redoutey, Coffey and Bergeron head elsewhere also

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I'm sure people will talk themselves into that like when they talked themselves into Pleasants transferring every offseason.

Right. They have no idea what any of these girls are thinking but they will predict this based on no real information. I guess I am one of those not really wanting them to leave but would understand if they did, especially if there is a better situation out there for them