Wayne State University senior shortstop and All-GLIAC First Team selection Jaci Banton is providing daily blog entries to wsuathletics.com (with assistance and guidance from sophomore third baseman Rebecca Stanley) as the Warriors participate in the 2010 NCAA Division II Softball Championship tournament this week in St. Joseph, Missouri.

Day four in Missouri (Friday) brought some funny antics.

We headed to the field for what we thought was going to be a routine practice, but Gary (head coach Gary Bryce) had other plans. Instead we played a game of Danish Rounders. Which is basically like softball but you have to hit the first pitch, there can be multiple people on each base and the fielders have to throw it to home plate to stop the play. Well, I don't want to rub it in, but we annihilated the other team.

We had some heavy hitters, including "Big Bad" Jeff Weiss (WSU SID) and Gary "Ye Olde school" Bryce. Weiss, as our hidden weapon, went 3 for 3 on the day for a perfect 1.000 batting average as well as 1.000 fielding. A big moment for him was in the top of the second when a huge hit was launched towards right center. We thought all was lost, BUT NO! Weisser tracked it down with finesse and grace! Gary was a brick wall in the infield stopping all that was hit at him. The other team tried to rally back in the bottom of the 3rd. Rob "Round Tripper" Fournier was up to bat, so we moved back, naturally. They rallied but were unable to overcome our immense lead.

After our great success we worked out, courtesy of Harker (our strength and conditioning coach), with hopes that we may someday have muscles like him.

Then we went to lunch at Panera again, LOVE IT. We love it so much that we are considering getting a bank loan to open one in our hometowns, in Canada.

We went back to the hotel for some downtime. Some people went to the historical Psychology Museum and others explored the town. We did this until we went back to the field to watch some other teams play and find out who we would eventually play.

After an extremely hot day at the park, we went to Olive Garden where they want to put cheese on everything. Garlic bread and salad was plentiful and I got the mussels, Stanley got the minestrone soup. We all fueled up on carbs until it was time to go to Baskin Robins for some delectable treats.

Right now we are doing laundry in some extremely undersized washers in order to get our uniforms ready for tomorrow. Our first game will be against Metro State at 2:30. Our minds are set on a win and we are all ready to get after it. After a win we will be reunited with our (assistant) coach Pat Kent, whom we have been missing a lot so far.

Lets get some W's
Jaci and Stanley