Completed Event: Softball versus Georgia on May 18, 2025 , Loss , 2, to, 5 , (F/8)
/
Final
Softball
2
vs Georgia
5
Through Caroline's Eyes: Team 3
4/3/2020 1:10:00 PM | Softball
Really, it's hard to know where to start.
At first I was mad. I couldn't believe that the Ivy League had canceled the remainder of their semester and the rest of their spring sports seasons'. Looking back that was definitely the right decision, but in the moment it felt all too rushed. Now I know that my frustration probably stemmed from knowing, deep down, that the future of our season was headed in that direction, too.
The 2020 season for Duke softball was all I expected and more, both for myself and as a team. We came off of last year knowing the talent and potential we brought to the table. With most of the team returning and getting older, adding a few freshman and a couple transfers, we were ready to go. We weren't a young team anymore. People on the outside always see our successes as greater than they are and our losses as allowable since, "you're only a third-year team." But for us, it doesn't feel like that.
I think everyone in our program knew that 2020 was destined to be a great year early on in the fall. There was just a different feeling showing up to practice every day, for coaches and players. It's really special when you can get twenty girls together in a room and they just gel. Both on and off the field. We had a mission and everyone was completely bought into it.
I don't know if you've seen it all over our social media, but our mantra for this year was 'Build The House'. There's a lot that goes into to starting a team from scratch. You could ask Coach Young all about that one. But, you can also ask everyone that's been behind the scenes for the last four years. Yes, a championship team requires immense talent and renowned coaching, but it also needs a strong culture. Our house already had its foundation – we had the talent and coaching – but we still needed to figure out who we wanted to be as a team. How did we want every team in the nation to view us? This was actually a discussion we had with one of Duke's sports psychologists, Greg Dale, prior to the season. We drew out adjectives of how we thought the rest of the ACC saw us the past two seasons.
Inconsistent. Young. Scrappy.
We then proceeded to flood the white board with descriptors of the team we were becoming and what we wanted to be known for.
Resilient. Competitors. Disciplined.
We wanted others to see us this way because it is what we knew we had in us. A championship team is formed with a championship culture. A mindset of greatness that everyone whole heartedly commits to. We had finally defined what that was for ourselves. We had been disciplined and together from July to January. In the classroom, weight room and on the field – it all matters. We competed every day and were resilient when things didn't go quite as planned. Now, it was time for us to bring this mentality to those not in a Duke jersey.
February didn't seem like it came fast enough. Our first trip of the season was down to the Sunshine State to play in the UCF Invitational. We were there to show that this year, we meant business. And we came out hot.
But I feel like these aren't the games that everyone is dying to hear about. That would be Texas. The worst and best games are those that are so intense that your heart can't stop beating a hundred miles a minute. They're the best when you're on top, but biggest heartbreak when you want it so badly but still can't reach it. That was Texas. It was the most highly-anticipated game on our nonconference schedule. And to make it even better they were unbeaten, at home and ranked fourth in the country. I've been asked if we felt like we were the underdogs going into the game. The expected answer would be yes. From the outside, Texas is a powerhouse. They're a team who had competed in the Super Regionals the year before and seemed to be unstoppable at this point in the season. And we're "only a third-year team" remember? But a game against the fourth-ranked team, regardless of who it is, is what we had been preparing for. You have to know that you're going to win every game if you ever want to give yourself a chance in the first place. It was our shot, at the highest level, to show the country what type of competitors we were. That's a game that I think everyone involved with of our program will never forget, but not just because it was our program's first win over a ranked opponent – it was the intensity of the game. The entire time it felt like anyone on either side was about to break the scorebook open. We just fought for it to be us.
Speaking of setting records, 2020 was the year for that. We smashed nearly every individual and team record possible. The pitchers got their jobs done in the circle, breaking the record for strikeouts in a game multiple times and remained a dominant force topping the ACC in ERA during our short season. Hitters brought power. We broke every home run record, doubles, runs, RBI, runs in an inning…the list could go on and on.
Prior to season, I wrote down a list of tangible goals on a flashcard that I wanted to reach during the year. Some of these included numbers for batting average, fielding percentage and home runs. I made them what I thought was attainable for me, not so far above my freshman year stats that it seemed ridiculous, but what I thought a good year for me would look like. Boy was I wrong. Everyone goes into a season hoping to be successful at the high level that college requires, but it's a different feeling when that success is happening right in front of your eyes. When the process that everyone always talks about, pays off. It's hard to know what all we would've accomplished this year without the season being cut short. What would be our new high for runs in an inning or game? How much more could we push that home run record? What about strikeouts in a game? I could honestly rave on and on about how good my teammates are, but at least now we know how high to set our expectations.
March 13th.
The day started out like a typical spring break practice day. We were preparing to play a series against Florida State beginning the following day. We went through a regular practice and regular lift trying to stay 'business as usual' even as all the craziness unfolded around us. Tweets and text messages began to circle about other conferences postponing seasons. We even heard that Florida State was no longer planning to travel to Durham that day. It felt like it was only a matter of time until we'd receive the news we had all been dreading. Then my phone buzzed. Peyton and I were walking to The Loop, our team's favorite on-campus restaurant, when we found out. In a single tweet, we learned that our season was canceled. It almost felt like the color drained from our faces in shock that we were done. When we finally got to the restaurant and met a few of our other teammates, everyone seemed to be in disbelief. Like what was happening wasn't really happening. While we were eating, Raine messaged the team letting everyone know that she and the other seniors were going to be hanging out in the outfield for a little bit. Everyone eating dropped their food and piled into cars to head over to East campus.
Almost immediately the entire team showed up. That's what we do – we're there for each other. Together, we sat in the outfield for the last time as Team 3. We laughed and cried, sat in silence, danced, you name it. We even held an impromptu Senior Day and if someone wasn't crying before, they were then. Just hours before, we stood in that same outfield warming up for what we didn't know was our last practice together.
The next day, we found out that we had to move out of our dorms by the end of the weekend. Imagine what it feels like having to pack up a year in a day. I can tell you…not good. Kyla Morris, my roommate, and I seemingly tore apart our room as quickly as we set it up. We had to. Moving out of a dorm room is stressful when you know a month in advance that you're leaving, even when you can start packing boxes of what you don't need but leaving in a day is a whole different story. It's hard leaving knowing what memories were left to be made there and in Durham.
Now that I've been at home in Tallahassee for a few weeks, I've had plenty of time to collect my thoughts on this year. There are things that I'm going to miss about Team 3. From the inevitable long waits in the airport, because if you are with Duke softball something will go wrong, to the TikToks before games. The banter in the locker room and Training Table dinners. I'll also miss all the memories we never got to make. As I said before, I've never met a group of people that gel so well together. At our very last team meeting, while everyone was crying, it was brought up that although the year was cut short, we are lucky for the time that we had. As the saying goes, how lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard. It's hard to say goodbye to a season like that. To a dream season. But this isn't a one and done.
23-4 didn't just happen this year. Everyone that buys into our program knows what it's destined to be: a championship program. That's just what Duke does – it's a championship school. Team 3's dream season started years ago with Coach Young. This is something that has been in the making since Duke Softball began. It was a season that although cut short, proved a lot. It proved to the rest of the country that we're a team who deserves notice, but it also proved to ourselves that we are capable of getting there. We belong in the big moments and we're built for them. Seasons like these are now the norm for us and the expectation. It's not a hope anymore.
I'm so excited for what the future brings for this program and Team 4. When that time comes, we'll be ready, but for now we are stuck to seeing each other through a computer screen.
You can view her story with photos on Spark Page.
At first I was mad. I couldn't believe that the Ivy League had canceled the remainder of their semester and the rest of their spring sports seasons'. Looking back that was definitely the right decision, but in the moment it felt all too rushed. Now I know that my frustration probably stemmed from knowing, deep down, that the future of our season was headed in that direction, too.
The 2020 season for Duke softball was all I expected and more, both for myself and as a team. We came off of last year knowing the talent and potential we brought to the table. With most of the team returning and getting older, adding a few freshman and a couple transfers, we were ready to go. We weren't a young team anymore. People on the outside always see our successes as greater than they are and our losses as allowable since, "you're only a third-year team." But for us, it doesn't feel like that.
I think everyone in our program knew that 2020 was destined to be a great year early on in the fall. There was just a different feeling showing up to practice every day, for coaches and players. It's really special when you can get twenty girls together in a room and they just gel. Both on and off the field. We had a mission and everyone was completely bought into it.
I don't know if you've seen it all over our social media, but our mantra for this year was 'Build The House'. There's a lot that goes into to starting a team from scratch. You could ask Coach Young all about that one. But, you can also ask everyone that's been behind the scenes for the last four years. Yes, a championship team requires immense talent and renowned coaching, but it also needs a strong culture. Our house already had its foundation – we had the talent and coaching – but we still needed to figure out who we wanted to be as a team. How did we want every team in the nation to view us? This was actually a discussion we had with one of Duke's sports psychologists, Greg Dale, prior to the season. We drew out adjectives of how we thought the rest of the ACC saw us the past two seasons.
Inconsistent. Young. Scrappy.
We then proceeded to flood the white board with descriptors of the team we were becoming and what we wanted to be known for.
Resilient. Competitors. Disciplined.
We wanted others to see us this way because it is what we knew we had in us. A championship team is formed with a championship culture. A mindset of greatness that everyone whole heartedly commits to. We had finally defined what that was for ourselves. We had been disciplined and together from July to January. In the classroom, weight room and on the field – it all matters. We competed every day and were resilient when things didn't go quite as planned. Now, it was time for us to bring this mentality to those not in a Duke jersey.
February didn't seem like it came fast enough. Our first trip of the season was down to the Sunshine State to play in the UCF Invitational. We were there to show that this year, we meant business. And we came out hot.
But I feel like these aren't the games that everyone is dying to hear about. That would be Texas. The worst and best games are those that are so intense that your heart can't stop beating a hundred miles a minute. They're the best when you're on top, but biggest heartbreak when you want it so badly but still can't reach it. That was Texas. It was the most highly-anticipated game on our nonconference schedule. And to make it even better they were unbeaten, at home and ranked fourth in the country. I've been asked if we felt like we were the underdogs going into the game. The expected answer would be yes. From the outside, Texas is a powerhouse. They're a team who had competed in the Super Regionals the year before and seemed to be unstoppable at this point in the season. And we're "only a third-year team" remember? But a game against the fourth-ranked team, regardless of who it is, is what we had been preparing for. You have to know that you're going to win every game if you ever want to give yourself a chance in the first place. It was our shot, at the highest level, to show the country what type of competitors we were. That's a game that I think everyone involved with of our program will never forget, but not just because it was our program's first win over a ranked opponent – it was the intensity of the game. The entire time it felt like anyone on either side was about to break the scorebook open. We just fought for it to be us.
Speaking of setting records, 2020 was the year for that. We smashed nearly every individual and team record possible. The pitchers got their jobs done in the circle, breaking the record for strikeouts in a game multiple times and remained a dominant force topping the ACC in ERA during our short season. Hitters brought power. We broke every home run record, doubles, runs, RBI, runs in an inning…the list could go on and on.
Prior to season, I wrote down a list of tangible goals on a flashcard that I wanted to reach during the year. Some of these included numbers for batting average, fielding percentage and home runs. I made them what I thought was attainable for me, not so far above my freshman year stats that it seemed ridiculous, but what I thought a good year for me would look like. Boy was I wrong. Everyone goes into a season hoping to be successful at the high level that college requires, but it's a different feeling when that success is happening right in front of your eyes. When the process that everyone always talks about, pays off. It's hard to know what all we would've accomplished this year without the season being cut short. What would be our new high for runs in an inning or game? How much more could we push that home run record? What about strikeouts in a game? I could honestly rave on and on about how good my teammates are, but at least now we know how high to set our expectations.
March 13th.
The day started out like a typical spring break practice day. We were preparing to play a series against Florida State beginning the following day. We went through a regular practice and regular lift trying to stay 'business as usual' even as all the craziness unfolded around us. Tweets and text messages began to circle about other conferences postponing seasons. We even heard that Florida State was no longer planning to travel to Durham that day. It felt like it was only a matter of time until we'd receive the news we had all been dreading. Then my phone buzzed. Peyton and I were walking to The Loop, our team's favorite on-campus restaurant, when we found out. In a single tweet, we learned that our season was canceled. It almost felt like the color drained from our faces in shock that we were done. When we finally got to the restaurant and met a few of our other teammates, everyone seemed to be in disbelief. Like what was happening wasn't really happening. While we were eating, Raine messaged the team letting everyone know that she and the other seniors were going to be hanging out in the outfield for a little bit. Everyone eating dropped their food and piled into cars to head over to East campus.
Almost immediately the entire team showed up. That's what we do – we're there for each other. Together, we sat in the outfield for the last time as Team 3. We laughed and cried, sat in silence, danced, you name it. We even held an impromptu Senior Day and if someone wasn't crying before, they were then. Just hours before, we stood in that same outfield warming up for what we didn't know was our last practice together.
The next day, we found out that we had to move out of our dorms by the end of the weekend. Imagine what it feels like having to pack up a year in a day. I can tell you…not good. Kyla Morris, my roommate, and I seemingly tore apart our room as quickly as we set it up. We had to. Moving out of a dorm room is stressful when you know a month in advance that you're leaving, even when you can start packing boxes of what you don't need but leaving in a day is a whole different story. It's hard leaving knowing what memories were left to be made there and in Durham.
Now that I've been at home in Tallahassee for a few weeks, I've had plenty of time to collect my thoughts on this year. There are things that I'm going to miss about Team 3. From the inevitable long waits in the airport, because if you are with Duke softball something will go wrong, to the TikToks before games. The banter in the locker room and Training Table dinners. I'll also miss all the memories we never got to make. As I said before, I've never met a group of people that gel so well together. At our very last team meeting, while everyone was crying, it was brought up that although the year was cut short, we are lucky for the time that we had. As the saying goes, how lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard. It's hard to say goodbye to a season like that. To a dream season. But this isn't a one and done.
23-4 didn't just happen this year. Everyone that buys into our program knows what it's destined to be: a championship program. That's just what Duke does – it's a championship school. Team 3's dream season started years ago with Coach Young. This is something that has been in the making since Duke Softball began. It was a season that although cut short, proved a lot. It proved to the rest of the country that we're a team who deserves notice, but it also proved to ourselves that we are capable of getting there. We belong in the big moments and we're built for them. Seasons like these are now the norm for us and the expectation. It's not a hope anymore.
I'm so excited for what the future brings for this program and Team 4. When that time comes, we'll be ready, but for now we are stuck to seeing each other through a computer screen.
You can view her story with photos on Spark Page.
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