Madison Cathcart, a sophomore first baseman on Seattle University’s softball team, was selected for the 2018 National Fastpitch Coaches Association First Team All-Pacific Region. This season, Cathcart set school records in her batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, doubles, walks, putouts, home runs and extra-base hits.

“I’m honored to be selected for the first team, but it’s not going to affect anything. I’m still going to come in next year playing and working the same way to ultimately get to where I want to be,” she said. “My goal is to be able to play on the USA team professionally.”

This season, Cathcart recounted that the team played more cohesively than last year.

“We were more selfless and wanted everyone to achieve and play well. We played as a team this year,” she said. “We hit the ground running. We didn’t win the Western Athletic Conference (WAC) tournament last year so we came back knowing we had something to prove and had the all-time record winning season which was awesome.”

One of her favorite memories from this season was from the team’s first few tournaments.

“We had a really late night game. We came back, went into extra innings and ended up winning that game. The next day, we had an early morning game and that game wasn’t going well,” she said. “At the end, we started coming back, tied it again, went into extra innings and won that game as well.”

The softball team’s season ended after their second game in the WAC championship tournament against Grand Canyon University in New Mexico. In response to the outcome of the WAC tournament, Cathcart expects that in the next season, their team will come back working harder.

“We have something to prove again. We didn’t go into the WAC tournament expecting the outcome we had. We were all disappointed and we all have something to prove for next year,” she said. “We all have a little chip on our shoulder to come back working harder this year.”

In preparation for the Fall season, Cathcart plans to practice just as she did in her previous years.

“From the time our season ends, I don’t touch a bat or a ball month for the rest of school. I take another week off when I get home and then I start easing myself back into it,” she said. “I do different drills, go work my old tournament team and do everything I can just to come back ready to hit the road again.”

Hunter may be reached at
[email protected]