Softball, Sports

Setterlund earns All-America First Team honors

Boston University softball coach Shawn Rychcik said on March 29 that junior center fielder April Setterlund would eventually slow down after she started the season as arguably the hottest hitter in the nation.

She never did.

Setterlund ended her 2010 campaign with the Terriers as hot as she started it, and she was rewarded for it Wednesday afternoon, earning Louisville Slugger/NFCA Division I All-America First Team honors. She is the first Terrier softball player to earn a first-team distinction and only the second to achieve All-American honors.

“I think it’s well-deserved,” Rychcik said. “Anyone who hits .500 for the year, or close to it, that’s pretty incredible. I haven’t seen every player in the country play, but I feel pretty good that the committee that picks the All-Americans really breaks it down and looks at everything. I’m not going to second-guess with her being on that first team.”

Setterlund’s season statistics are incredible. She was far and away the best batter in the America East conference, appearing in the top five in every offensive category. She led the Terriers in every offensive category and appeared in the national top 10 in four of them. Her .482 batting average was good for fifth in the nation. Her .579 on-base percentage was sixth. Her .861 slugging percentage was eighth, and her 1.11 runs per game was 10th.

After starting the season with a .600 average through five games, all eyes were on Setterlund to see if she could maintain her streak. Rychcik seemed to be keeping things in perspective throughout the season, saying, “There will be a balance,” on March 3, “It’s going to get harder as more games get played. To see her hit .500, .600 for the year, I just don’t know if it will happen,” on March 17 and “She’s going to cool down after a while. Hopefully she proves me wrong,” on March 29.

While Rychcik also showered her with plenty of praise throughout the season, he seemed to be challenging her, and it paid off big time.

“Those comments were in part to, one, take the pressure off her, and two, motivate her in the same breath,” Rychcik said. “Because, I knew, knowing her, that she would want to prove me wrong. But, I wanted to take the pressure off and say, I don’t expect it. So, there was a little gamesmanship on my part.

“It takes the pressure off her, and gives her some motivation. Players love to prove their coach wrong. It’s not that April was trying to prove me wrong in a bad way. I knew she wanted to do it. I knew she wanted to hit .500. Her goal will be to hit .500 next year. I know it will.”

Setterlund’s expectations play a big part in what she accomplishes.

“She expects a lot out of herself,” Rychcik said. “Her freshman year, she didn’t book her flight to go home until after regionals because those were her expectations, and we didn’t go to regionals.

“I think she expects to get a hit every single time. She expects to hit .500. I think the expectations for herself are very high. There’s also a ton of talent there. You can have a ton of expectations but you’ve got to have talent. When you get in the ranks of [University of] Arizona, Stanford [University], those type of players that you’re now mentioned with, you really need to have some talent, and that she does. I think her expectations and her talent make her a strong, strong person to get to that level every year.”

By earning first team All-American honors, Setterlund guarantees herself a place among the greats in Terrier softball history. Not only is she the only player in the program’s history to be honored with first team accolades, she is the only hitter from the Northeast region to be honored as an All-American in 2010. The other two players to garner honors were Fordham University pitcher Jen Mineau and University of Massachusetts-Amherst hurler Sara Plourde. Such company puts Setterlund’s season in perspective.

For example, Sara Plourde, a thorn in the Terriers’ side this regular season and the premier pitcher in the Northeast, led the nation in strikeouts with 556. Yet she was named to the third team while Setterlund was named to the first.

The only other player in BU history to be named an All-American was Audrey West in 1996, whose ERA of 0.49 led the nation that year. Even she only made the third team.

“She’s pretty humble about things,” Rychcik said of her accomplishments. “I think she’s learning to handle these awards and recognition, that type of scenario, and to be a little more comfortable with it. Her response would be, “I just want to play softball.’ That’s what she loves to do. She works hard, though. She has a great work ethic, and has really developed as a player the last couple years.”

Over the course of the season, Setterlund broke records and received plenty of other accolades. On her way to being named to the first team All-American, she broke BU records for hits, doubles, RBIs and runs and was named the ECAC and America East player of the year. She was also elevated to the NFCA All-Northeast Region Team.

Such a list of accomplishments leaves little for Setterlund to achieve in her senior year at BU except surpassing her own records. After a year as successful as 2010, the task will be more difficult.

“It’s going to be tough,” Rychcik said. “I think, just like any team winning, you put a target on your back. You become the player that everybody wants, everybody works around . . . I think it makes it tough for her. Will she have the exact same year? I don’t know. But, I can see her being very strong and if we can surround her with the right talent, and put the right people on base in front of her, [opponents] will be forced to pitch to her.”

Setterlund’s success also promises to pay dividends on the recruiting front as well.

“I hope some of the big players out there see that you can come to BU and make a name for yourself nationally,” Rychcik said. “You don’t have to go to a big BCS school to do that. You can do it here.”

After another impressive year as a whole, the BU softball team will look to continue to take steps toward the women’s collegiate World Series in the future. The fact that all eight teams in the tournament this year have at least one player named to an All-American team bodes well for the Terriers. After consecutive seasons with America East titles and NCAA tournament wins, the Terriers will look to fry bigger fish in 2011.

“In the big picture, yeah, I like to hope that in the next couple years we can win a regional and get to the finals, which means we’re going to work hard to not be that four seed,” Rychcik said. “We can get to be a three or a two seed or something along those lines and get a little more favorable draw.”

“We’ve upped the schedule next year. We’ll go to Tennessee. We’ll go to Georgia Tech. We’ll do two South Florida tournaments. I think it’s a process and hopefully the plan is to continue where we’re at &- to keep building and keep building and keep taking those steps.”

Website | More Articles

This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.

Comments are closed.