Tennessee freshman catcher Elsa Morrison has been lauded this softball season for her work with the touted pitching trio of Karlyn Pickens, Sage Mardjetko and Erin Nuwer.
On Thursday afternoon, it was her bat that led this year’s Lady Volunteers to their biggest win yet.
Morrison’s three-run home run to center field in the second inning off of Texas ace Teagan Kavan enabled Tennessee to take control in a 6-3 victory over the reigning national champion in the opening round of the Women’s College World Series. The 5-foot-11 former Knoxville Farragut standout capitalized after Kavan, who has 25 wins this year, hit Alannah Leach and walked Makenzie Butt to open the second.
“Everything that we had prepared for was that up-spin speed and trying to win the belt,” Morrison said afterward during a press conference. “We had talked about being aggressive early in the count, because we knew that she would want to try to get up on us early. It means the world getting to have that kind of at-bat with the girls that I love and go to war with every single day.
“Everybody was talking about nerves, but I had complete peace in the box knowing that the girls in the dugout would have my back no matter the outcome.”
Morrison went 2-for-3, adding a sixth-inning double to right-center field before the crowd of 11,923 at Devon Park in Oklahoma City.
“This season hasn’t been easy for her,” Lady Vols coach Karen Weekly said. “It’s not like she’s batted .400 all year. You can tell everything about somebody when they’re struggling, and we watched her continue to work. There was no drama with her.
“She’s just really analytical about things — she’s an engineering major — and she just kept going to work.”
Tennessee improved to 48-10 and will next play Saturday (3 p.m. Eastern on ABC) against Texas Tech, which improved to 58-7 in Thursday’s first game with an 8-0 blanking of Mississippi State that required only five innings. The Lady Vols lost their WCWS opener to Oklahoma 4-3 last season, last claiming their first game in Oklahoma City with a 10-5 downing of Alabama in 2023.
Texas (47-12) and Mississippi State (43-20) will vie in an elimination contest at 7 p.m. Friday on ESPN.
“It’s a really big deal, and it’s not just for the rest,” Weekly said of starting successfully. “You’re in the winners bracket, so you’re not immediately turning around knowing your back is against the wall and that your season could end.
“It will be nice tomorrow getting to breathe a little bit and getting to plan together.”
The Lady Vols extended their advantage to 4-0 in the fifth, when Taelyn Holley led off with a single up the middle, went to second on a wild pitch, advanced to third on a Sophia Knight groundout and scored on a wild pitch. After the Longhorns pulled within 4-1 in their half of the fifth, Tennessee performed some two-out damage in the sixth with Morrison’s double to right-center and Gabby Leach’s RBI single to right-center to go up 5-1.
Mardjetko got the win, allowing one hit in four innings, to improve to 15-2 this season, while Pickens worked the final three innings to notch her seventh save of the year. Texas pulled within 5-3 in the sixth inning against Pickens when Reese Atwood’s two-out single to left was followed by Leighann Goode’s two-run homer to center.
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Mardjetko and Pickens held the top of the Texas order — Kayden Henry, Katie Stewart and Viviana Martinez — to a combined 0-for-8 showing. Texas eliminated Tennessee from last year’s WCWS, and Mardjetko was asked if that served as any motivation.
“Every team out here is obviously good, so it doesn’t matter who it is,” she said. “We’re focused on us and sticking to who we are.”
Vols set to open
Tennessee is set to open NCAA baseball tournament play Friday against East Carolina in the Chapel Hill Regional, with ESPNU scheduled to televise the game at noon.
The third-seeded Pirates are in their eighth consecutive NCAA field, while this is seven straight for the second-seeded Vols. Regional top seed North Carolina is in its ninth straight NCAA tourney.
Florida now holds the nation’s longest streak with 18 consecutive appearances, with Vanderbilt having its streak of 19 straight snapped. LSU had its run of 13 straight end, and Tennessee first-year coach Josh Elander was asked Thursday in a press conference whether name, image and likeness compensation has factored into the streak-snapping.
“That’s a heavy one and a good one there,” Elander said. “I think how each team handles that is mutually exclusive, and we’re not worried about how others do it. We’re worried about how we do it. If you go all-encompassing with the midweek games, where SEC and ACC teams are getting beat, I think anybody can win on any given day.
“The quality of the player on smaller rosters makes it more competitive than it’s ever been, and the depth across the rosters is creating more parity. I don’t know if that’s a byproduct of NIL or not.”
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com.
David Paschall has covered sports at the Chattanooga Times Free Press since 1999 and wrote for the Chattanooga Free Press in the nine years before that. David has mostly covered college athletics, with a focus on the University of Georgia from 2000 to 2019 and the University of Tennessee since 2020. He grew up in Chattanooga and is a graduate of the Baylor School and Auburn University. David has received multiple writing awards and has served as a Heisman Trophy voter since 2003. He has also worked in radio in Chattanooga and has been on the SEC Network’s “Classic Rewind” series since 2014. David and his wife, Kelly, have three children — Conner, Emily and Spencer.