DANVILLE, Va.  — Only two seniors. A handful of returners. A new coaching staff. And a starting lineup that is two-thirds freshmen. Few of Averett University softball's peers expected much roar out of the Cougars this season. Yet, they're all sitting at home as Averett prepares for this week's NCAA Regional in Ashland, Virginia.

On paper, it was easy to overlook Averett entering this season. The Cougars lost a number of key players to graduation. The USA South Conference coaches voted Averett fifth out of six teams in the East Division, probably assuming the Cougars were not quite ready for a return to the top of the league with so many freshmen despite returning two All-Americans.

Coincidentally, the youth movement on the Cougars' roster may be one of the main reasons Averett ran the table in the USA South Conference Tournament and earned its second NCAA berth in three seasons.

As first-year head coach Ashley Pyron put it, sometimes ignorance is bliss.

"The beauty of it is that they're so young and they didn't know what to expect at the conference tournament or just moving forward," Pyron said. "So they get to enjoy the moment and the excitement of it."

That was certainly clear from the start. Averett squeaked out a 6-5 win over Rhodes College to open the season, then knocked off then-fourth-ranked Emory University 7-4 on its own field, then edged Rhodes 10-9 in eight innings before falling to Emory to finish off the first weekend of play. That early high was followed by a quick reality check and some growing pains, however.

"We laugh all the time that we are so thankful that Guilford College and Roanoke College straight up handed it to us because we had this moment where we felt like, 'This is great and we feel so good,' and then get humbled," Pyron said. "You have to learn how to win. They didn't know how to grind it out and really appreciate it the process of learning how to win."

With such a young team, the coaching staff came up with a simple mindset offensively — go 60 feet (the distance between bases) at a time and try to get as many 60 feet at a time. And if the team gets behind early, it's not the end of the world. Just chip away one inning at a time.

"That resiliency comes from our coaches," freshman Casey Cook said. "They never accept us giving up. It's not an option to just back down from the competition. They always remind us that we have another inning or more at-bats to make something happen."

It worked. Of Averett's 28 wins so far, 12 were come-from-behind victories. The Cougars also notched 10 one-run wins, including an 8-7 victory in eight innings in the USA South Tournament championship. Pyron said that game against Ferrum College was the first time where the team may have questioned itself all year.

"I think the first time they actually hit a 'moment' was in the USA South championship game when they were down 3-0 and didn't score with the bases loaded" Pyron recalled. "They're used to being able to manufacture runs in those situations. We've been preaching all year to just chip away. That doesn't always mean in the first or second inning. You may face a pitcher for seven innings and you may just get them at the end. So we had to stop and take a minute to explain that chipping away doesn't mean it's going to happen in the third. It means you have to be patient and keep wearing the pitcher down. That's what happened in that game. We had to regroup and come back to it."

Against Ferrum, Averett rallied from a 3-0 deficit to tie it at 3-3, then rallied from a 7-3 deficit to force extra innings before winning 8-7 in the eighth inning. For so many freshmen experiencing their first conference tournament, they were able to play loose because they didn't know they weren't supposed to.

"I think it has worked to our advantage because we didn't know how much pressure it was until we got there," freshman Brianna Harris said. "Going into it and not knowing what to expect and just playing like we knew how to the whole year and putting it into effect … I think it actually did work to our advantage not experiencing that pressure and not knowing what was at stake."

The Cougars' confidence in those close games has been the difference and is what has propelled them this far as they head into Friday's NCAA Regional against Randolph-Macon College at 11 a.m.

"I think we've been able to adapt to all the different situations we've been put through and we've made it through pretty well," Cook said. "We had a pretty good regular season and we had a good conference tournament. Coming down to it, I think we're ready."

Pyron believes there's no pressure for her young team. Instead, she believes more pressure is on the two nationally ranked teams in their part of the bracket — No. 1 Virginia Wesleyan College and No. 18 Randolph-Macon.
 

"When it really comes down to it in the tournament, none of that stuff matters," Pyron said of regular season records, rankings and statistics. "That's beauty of going into the postseason. I know from experience. It's hard to be the 43-2 team because it is hard to close the door on what you just did. That's where I'm excited to convey to our team that Randolph-Macon, Franklin & Marshall College and Virginia Wesleyan — we're all in the same part in our season right now. We are all 0-0 at this point."

The Cougars want to win and keep advancing. They also know anything from this point on is just icing on the cake after adding the program's third conference championship three more than weeks ago. And for the freshmen, it's given them a taste of success that will bode well over their next three seasons in blue and gold.

"It's definitely exciting," Harris said. "It's not that we didn't expect to come this far, but to get this far and realize how surreal it is is crazy. I think everybody is surprised, but not surprised. Throughout the whole year we've worked together as a unit and we're strong as a team. All of our hard work paid off and got us this far. I think it showed us that we can do anything we put our minds to."