After tragic tornado, Louisiana Tech plays with renewed vigor.
On April 24th, the Louisiana Tech Lady Techsters suffered a hard-fought loss to the Louisiana-Lafayette Ragin’ Cajuns. Hosting a top-10 team at their home in Ruston for the first time this season, the Lady Techsters’ pitching staff gave up seven runs, but held the hard-hitting Cajuns offense in check.
Just a few hours later, softball was the last thing on the minds of anyone in Ruston, as tornado sirens sounded and bathtubs became popular dwelling places as severe weather struck the small town.
A tornado touched down in Ruston in the wee hours of Thursday morning, the 25th, causing catastrophic damage through the Tech campus and the town of Ruston, claiming two lives at a residential home off-campus. While the members of the Lady Techsters’ softball program escaped unharmed, their home field was not so lucky.
The Lady Techsters Softball Complex had been utterly destroyed in the twister. Felled trees scattered the infield and had fallen on top of dugouts and the grandstands. Light poles had been taken to the ground or bent completely in half. The outfield fence was destroyed completely. The scoreboard was ripped to shreds, barely recognizable in the aftermath of the storm.
“It’s really depressing,” Lady Techsters senior Berkley Calapp told a local reporter. She was near tears, just hours after the tornado, as she stood on her home field and surveyed the damage. In the midst of the destruction that was spread across the campus, and once they confirmed that all of their teammates and staff members were safe, there was another consideration in the backs of the minds of the Lady Techster seniors: Senior Day festivities were scheduled for the weekend, the final home series of their decorated careers in Ruston. And there was no way softball was going to be played on their home field anytime soon.
As cleanup began in the aftermath of the tornado, and in the wake of the storm’s destruction, the Lady Techsters’ neighbors to the east provided a solution to the immediately-pressing softball issue. Louisiana-Monroe athletic director Scott McDonald offered the use of the Warhawks’ softball facilities. Playing a conference series on the road, the Warhawks would not be using their own facilities, and were willing to provide them to their compadres from just down Interstate 20.
Set to take on Western Kentucky in a battle of the top two teams in the Conference USA standings at that point, the Lady Techsters had just a couple of days to come to terms with all of the happenings and the rush of emotions before getting ‘back to business’ on the softball field.
Senior pitcher Preslee Gallaway said that same rush of emotions didn’t hit her right away. “It’s just scary. Right after something like [the tornado], you don’t know who’s trapped and that kind of thing. It hit some of them right away, but for me, it took a day, because I was just in shock… I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry; I really didn’t know what to do. It’s just so much to take in… we have teammates to lean on, and we’re a family.”
“The game of softball has always been in my life,” Gallaway continued. “It is my getaway, and I think that Coach giving us the opportunity, if we wanted to play or not, I think he realized that a lot of people use that emotion and put it in the game. For me, this is my getaway. I don’t want to sit there and think about the field that I lost. I want to be out here and play with my girls. I want to pitch for them.”
Morgan Turkoly, the reigning Conference USA Player of the Year, shared her own thoughts on her mindset and preparation in the days between the destructive storm and taking the field again: “I think it’s hard not to concentrate on [the damage], because the whole town is behind that, but we really had to figure out how we were going to go into this series with the right mindset, and I think that’s something that really speaks to this team’s character and what things are all about here [at Louisiana Tech].”
Despite being the home team on a field not their own, the Louisiana Tech team did their best to make the best of their situation. They took plaques and other memorabilia from their dugout from Ruston to place in the home dugout in Monroe for the series, to give it a feel of being ‘home.’
The grandstands were filled to the brim, with an estimated crowd of more than seven hundred people lining the bleachers for the squad’s return to the field following the devastating storm. Not only did Tech fans show out for their team, even some Louisiana-Monroe fans showed up in support.
“I think that speaks really to the town of Ruston,” Turkoly said later. “It was amazing to see the fact that everyone came here to support us, even people from Monroe, ULM fans were behind us. I really couldn’t believe it; that was an amazing atmosphere for us.”
The emotions of the day were running high, and the Lady Techsters played inspired softball against a quality Western Kentucky team, beginning the series with an 8-0 run-rule victory. A 4-1 victory for the Lady Techsters completed the series-opening doubleheader, while a 7-1 win on Sunday gave the program a crucial series sweep.
“I think [the team]played for something bigger than themselves,” Lady Techsters head coach Mark Montgomery said after his team secured the sweep. “They played for each other, they played for their school, and they played for their community. I’ll be honest with you; I don’t know who could have beaten us the first game. The raw emotion and adrenaline they had in the first game of the series was just unbelievable.”
In the midst of the severe weather and the aftereffects of the tornado, as well as the importance of the conference series to be played, not to be lost amidst the fray was the fact that the weekend also held the final games in Northeast Louisiana for a five-member senior class that have recorded more than 140 victories during their careers in Ruston. The class of 2019 includes Turkoly, Gallaway, Krystal de la Cruz, Jazlyn Crowder, and Calapp.
During the series against Western Kentucky, the Lady Techsters honored the opposing team’s seniors and the ceremonial first pitch for the series finale included the mothers of all five LA Tech seniors throwing a pitch to their daughters. Later in the day, Senior Day festivities for the Lady Techster graduates took place in one of the indoor facilities on campus.
“What have [our seniors]meant? It’s beyond words,” Montgomery said. “When they show you that kind of leadership and set that kind of standard, then they show everybody what it means to be part of this program and be a steward of Louisiana Tech softball.”
Gallaway was effusive in her praise of her classmates. “We have come up as a class. It’s not where one came in last year, one the year before; we have come up all as one. And I think that says a lot; I think just that alone helps. The pitching aspect, Mo and Jaz in the outfield, and Berkley, she’s been battling through so many injuries. For Krystal and me, at the end of the day, we know we’ve got each other’s backs in the circle.”
In the final weekend of the regular season, with the Conference USA regular-season title on the line, the Lady Techsters travel to Hattiesburg, Mississippi to face off against Southern Miss, and will head to the conference tournament next week. Still unable to practice on their home field, as cleanup continues and rebuilding begins across Ruston, it was Gallaway who might have put it best when asked about her team’s mindset after the happenings of the last week and a half:
“This team is resilient,” she said. “The fire within us, I can’t even explain it. We’re a family and we act like a family. I went to campus [during the tornado warning]to get a freshman off of campus. We’re not leaving anybody behind. I love this team… and the game, it gives you fire.”
