Randy Smith
The Tennessee Lady Vols softball team is headed to the "Sweet 16" of the NCAA Tournament for the ninth time. Eighth-seeded Tennessee will host Texas A&M in a best two out of three series, with the winner advancing to the Women's World Series. The Lady Vols secured the trip to the Super Regionals with a 3-0 win Sunday over Longwood, as sophomore pitcher Matty Moss tossed a four-hitter and ran her record to 25-2 on the season.
Tennessee is now 47-10 as they host the Aggies this week, which prompts one to ask, is this the best sports program at the University of Tennessee? There is no doubt.
It is the best and certainly the most consistent. Co-head coaches Ralph and Karen Weekly brought the team out of the dark ages when they took over 15 years ago, and this season Ralph Weekly reached a career milestone as he now has 1,302 career wins, good for fourth all-time among college softball coaches. "Well, it just means that we've had a lot of really good players you know, " Weekly said in March. " I know everybody says that, but it's really true you know."
He is right. Since taking over at Tennessee, the Weeklys have produced a total of 25 Louisville Slugger All-Americans, including four-time award winner, pitcher Monica Abbott. The talent has been there all along, and while this year's group is multi-talented, it's also very young.
Tennessee has been in seven Women's College World Series, and will make it eight if they can get past Texas A&M this week. The only thing missing on the Weeklys' resume is that national championship, and if they make the final eight teams in Oklahoma City, don't count them out. That would be a mistake. In the opening round of the NCAA Tournament this past weekend in Knoxville, Tennessee trailed USC Upstate 3-0 with two outs in the seventh inning. The Lady Vols rallied for a 7-3 win, scoring all seven runs with two outs in the last inning. Karen Weekly called it the biggest comeback in Lady Vols softball history. That win catapulted Tennessee into the finals where they defeated Longwood.
I became good friends with the Weeklys when they were coaching at UTC in the 1990s, and I really fell in love with their program at Tennessee in 2006. I had a knee replacement surgery the week of the 2006 College World Series, so while I was home recuperating, I watched them play for all the NCAA marbles on television. They made it all the way to the final game, where they were beaten by Arizona 6-0 as Monica Abbott simply ran out of gas. Tennessee was an amazing 61-12 that season, and I was hooked. I've watched every College World Series since then especially when the Lady Vols are involved.
So, while most of the other sports programs at Tennessee are struggling with mediocrity or even worse, softball has been the guiding light for the university for a long time. Fans expect every sport to win at the same level, and win with the same class that softball does. If you drew up a college softball program from scratch, to compete year after year with the elite programs in the country, you couldn't come up with a better blueprint for success than the one Ralph and Karen Weekly have built at Tennessee. Maybe this is the year that hard to catch national championship trophy makes it to the shelf in Knoxville. We'll be watching.
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Randy Smith has been covering sports on radio, television and print for the past 45 years. After leaving WRCB-TV in 2009, he has written two books, and has continued to free-lance as a play-by-play announcer. His career has included a 17-year stretch as host of the Kickoff Call In Show on the University of Tennessee’s prestigious Vol Network. He has been a member of the Vol Network staff for 30 years. He has done play-by-play on ESPN, ESPN II, CSS, and Fox SportSouth, totaling more than 500 games, and served as a well-known sports anchor on Chattanooga television for more than a quarter-century. In 2003, he became the first television broadcaster to be inducted into the Greater Chattanooga Area Sports Hall of Fame. Randy and his wife Shelia reside in Hixson. They have two married children, Christi and Chris Perry; Davey and Alison Smith. They have five grandchildren, Coleman, Boone, Mattingly, DellaMae, and CoraLee.