CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas – Junior
Primrose Aholelei of the Texas A&M-Corpus Christi softball team racked up the postseason awards, earning SLC Pitcher of the Year and SLC Newcomer of the Year in addition to joining senior
Gabriella Torres on the All-Conference teams announced by the league office on Monday.
Aholelei was named to the First-Team while Torres was a Second-Team honoree. Both are first time All-Conference selections.
Aholelei became the third SLC Newcomer of the Year in program history, joining Kim Connelly (2008) and Hannah Schwarz (2010). She is the third Pitcher of the Year but first since the Islanders joined in the Southland Conference, as Sarah Pauly was a two-time Pitcher of the Year in the Big South.
Though, she is the first student-athlete in program history to be a recipient of both awards.
"This is another huge step for our program," said head coach
Kathleen Rodriguez. "To have earned individual top honors as well as All-Conference honors for Primrose and Gabriella is a testament to their leadership, hard work, and determination to make this team better every day.
"I am beyond proud of Primrose and Gabriella, they are both beautiful examples of how this game should be played."
Aholelei posted a stellar season her first year as an Islander, emerging as the ace of the pitching early on. She led the conference in innings pitched (183.2), total strikeouts (159), batters struck out looking (43), and wins (18). In addition, she finished second in ERA at 1.83 and fourth in opposing batting average at .228. She was the first pitcher in the league to pitch at least 100 innings and second to record at least 100 strikeouts. She was 10-6 in SLC play for a 1.73 ERA.
Torres was both an offensive and defensive anchor for the Islanders, leading the team in batting average with a .349 overall but .404 in SLC play. She was the only Islander to record at least 20 hits against Southland opponents this year, three of which were extra-base hits. At catcher, she totaled a .957 fielding percentage with 98 putouts and 14 assists. She caught seven Southland athletes stealing this year. In addition, she posted a .462 slugging and .500 obp in conference play.
Click here to view the full All-Conference teams.
The Islanders will enter the SLC Tournament as the No. 5 seed, set to face No. 4 Lamar Tuesday at 12 p.m. It is the second year in a row that the Islanders made the tournament under Rodriguez, who led the team to its first SLC Tournament appearance since 2015 last year.
A&M-Corpus Christi won the season series against the Cardinals, taking it 2-1. It will be the opening matchup of the tournament and will be streamed live on ESPN+.
"Postseason is always such an exciting time of the year. For the tournament, we start fresh with an 0-0 record, but we do this with the lessons and maturity of every game we've played to date under our belt.
"This team has worked hard to become one unit and to fight for one another tirelessly. We will work one pitch, one out, one hit, one catch as a time, and not make it any bigger than that. I look forward to seeing our approach to postseason play," said Rodriguez.
The berth begins after Rodriguez led the Islanders to the program's first winning season since 2011 with the 23-22 record. A&M-Corpus Christi will be going for its first ever SLC Tournament Championship.
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