Howard University’s softball team saw its season come to an end at the NCAA Durham Regional with losses to Duke and Coastal Carolina, but it did not dim the team’s pride for all it had accomplished. Earlier this month, the Bison won their third-ever Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference (MEAC) Tournament Championship.
“Winning a conference tournament is a goal for every coach,” said head coach Tori Tyson, who is in her seventh season at the historically Black university in Washington, DC. “You have a vision, and I knew that I had a special class. To see it all come together, I’ll always be humbled by that. I’m humbled by the commitment that these young ladies made to make this happen.”
Tyson said the student-athletes on the softball team weren’t afraid of hard work. Leading up to the season, they put in many hours working on conditioning. She designed a hard schedule, which included trips to the Mary Nutter Classic in Palm Springs, California, where they faced some of the strongest teams in the country, and the Outrigger Invitational in Hawaii.
“They are battle-tested; they are resilient,” Tyson said. “To make a commitment at this age…to something where you can’t control the result, there’s a risk that comes with that. It takes a level of fearlessness that, regardless of what happens in May, they’re going to fully commit to doing [the work] in August. That’s a big decision to make. … They handled hard together really, really well.”
Softball is not a particularly diverse sport, so showing up as a team with all young women of color makes a bold statement. Tyson said the roster includes a number of student-athletes from California, but other parts of the country are represented as well.
“A lot of minority women come to [Howard] to find a sense of belonging,” said Tyson. “They already understand the bigger picture.”
At the Washington Nationals Youth Academy, they see young girls of color. “We are like their heroes,” Tyson said. “They think we’re the best softball players around. Our girls volunteer with them weekly. It’s a little reminder that their duty is to serve and represent something much bigger than themselves. When we make it to the postseason, we understand that it’s not just about winning the tournament; it’s about us representing all HBCUs and all these minority teams who didn’t get a chance to make the postseason.”