The Mt. Hood Community College Saints softball team has the drive to do great things this year.

With an addition to their pitching staff, left-hander Samantha Stockfleth, and eight returning players, the Saints are experienced, strong, and highly capable of achieving their goals of sweeping both the Southern Region and the NWAACC (Northwest Athletic Association of Community Colleges) tournaments this season.

“If we rise to the occasion and play like we know we can, we can beat any team,” said sophomore outfielder Chelsea Dixon. “We have a really good team this year with the talent and abilities to win, and we can do it if we all play together as a team.”

Dixon, who is out for at least part of the season with a broken finger, is already committed to playing at Portland State University next year, a Division I school. Another returning player who is signed-up to play at a different college next year is right-handed pitcher Alexis Hadenfeld, who is committed to Utah State.

According to head coach Meadow McWhorter, the majority of her team is “fully loaded” and ready to play well this spring.

“I want them to be successful, but they’ve got to learn to take one game at a time,” she said. “When I first started coaching here, I looked ahead to every game, but now I coach more (in the moment). As a coach, you never know when one of your players will have a bad day and can become a completely different player than what you’re normally used to.”

The key players this season are team captain and starting sophomore catcher Jill Quesenberry, returning right-handed pitcher Krystle Brooks, Hadenfeld, Dixon, sophomore starting third baseman Megan Moeller (called “Moe” by her teammates), and sophomore shortstop and former assistant coach Sunny Riskey.

“Sunny has done a tremendous job in her leadership role and has learned how to become a player again,” said McWhorter of her previous year’s assistant coach.

McWhorter, in her third year of coaching softball at Mt. Hood and a former Saints pitcher, holds many of the school’s pitching records including the most innings pitched with 171.1 and most at bats with 679 (both acquired during the 1999 season), but hopes to see that change during the span of her coaching career at MHCC.

“My goal by the time I am done coaching here is to have every record broken by the players that I have coached,” she said.

Already, McWhorter has been successful with her goal with Hadenfeld taking the strikeout record (once held by McWhorter) and Brooks blasting past the best E.R.A. (earned-run-average) record last season.

This season began with a three-day tournament (March 11-13) at Goldwest College in Huntington Beach, Calif. The Saints, who were the only out-of-state team competing, finished the tournament against the top junior colleges in California with a 2-2 record including an eight-inning 3-2 defeat against the third-ranked team in the state, Pasadena.
On Tuesday afternoon, the Saints were scheduled to play a double-header against Lower Columbia, but the game was rained out and rescheduled for Thursday. Results for the games were unavailable.

Six-time NWAACC champion Lower Columbia, Clackamas and the majority of the Southern Region teams will be the Saints’ biggest competition this year. The Southern Region was the most dominant in the NWAACC last year with four out of the top five placements in the final tournament going to schools in the region (including third place for Mt. Hood) and it is looking like this season will be similar.

“We have a really strong team this year and I believe that we can take the NWAACCs,” said Moeller, who was out for three-quarters of last season with a knee injury and has been playing softball as an infielder for more than 13 years. “I’m excited for the year because we all get along so well. There are eight of us returning this season and the freshmen are right here with us.”

Quesenberry agrees “If we keep our concentration and don’t get distracted, we can be a team that wins together,” she said. “We like to laugh together, and I think that we can keep a really good team morale.”

Moeller thinks that the team has the potential to accomplish a lot this season. “We’re so focused out on the field,” she said. “I think we’re ready.”