Brookside's Salena Kauffman has commited to play softball at Cleveland State University. Brookside will hold a ceremony on Thursday (Nov. 18) at 9:30 a.m.

Kauffman will play her senior season at Brookside this spring. She's been playing varsity softball since her freshman season. She was an All-Patriot Athletic Conference selection Second Teamer last season.

Kauffman has been playing softball since she was five years old and started travel ball in 2005. This past summer in the Queen of Diamond Showcase South, she was a All-QDSS First Teamer, QDSS MVP and Cage MVP.

She was also selected as a catcher for the 2011 North American Select Team for the CUP Tournament in the Netherlands.

Kaufman will join other locals such as Elyria's Tess Sito, Andrea Nagy, Megan Bashak and Ashlee Stolarski. Keystone's Jessica Burt is a senior this season.

swalker@MorningJournal.com

Elyria’s Megan Bashak had three hits and drove in a pair of runs to lead Cleveland State over Valparaiso, 5-1, completing a weekend sweep on Sunday afternoon at Viking Field in Cleveland.

The win allowed CSU to end the regular season with a 42-13 record and in first place in the Horizon League with a 22-2 record. It is the most wins ever by the Vikings, also setting a league record for conference victories in a season (old record was 17 by CSU last year).

Cleveland State will host the Horizon League Championship starting Thursday at Viking Field, entering the tourney as the No. 1.

"We came out ready to play all weekend and it showed on the field," Elyria native and CSU head coach Angie Nicholson said on the team’s website. "Today's game didn't mean anything in the conference race but our kids have a lot of pride and they wanted to show that they are the best team in the conference.

"We hit the ball really hard today and found the gaps. I don't like that we left nine runners on base, but that shows how many opportunities we had today."

CSU got its second run in the fourth when Bashak led off with a double, went to third on a fly ball by Keystone’s Jessica Burt and scored on a single by Elyria’s Tess Sito.

The Vikings will now have off until Thursday when they open the defense of their Horizon League Championship title when they play the winner of No. 4 Valparaiso vs. No. 5 Green Bay game beginning at 1:30 p.m. at Viking Field.

For the season, Sito and Burt are 1-2 in hitting. Sito is batting .436 (72-for-165) with nine doubles, a triple, 17 home runs and 44 RBIs. The home runs are most ever by a freshman at CSU. Burt is batting .333 (60-for-180) with 16 doubles, four triples, two home runs and 26 RBIs. Sito and Burt are also 1-2 in steals (Sito-39, Burt-28).

Bashak is batting .244 (29-for-119) with six doubles, a triple, three home runs and 22 RBIs. Elyria's Andrea Nagy is also on the team. She has made nine appearance, including seven starts. She is batting . 211 (4-for-19) with a double, two home runs and four RBIs.

swalker@MorningJournal.com

PENDLETON, Indiana - Angie Nicholson, an Elyria native who coaches Cleveland State’s softball team, led the Vikings to their first-ever Horizon League Championship, defeating the University of Illinois-Chicago, 4-2 on Sunday.

With the title, CSU earns the Horizon's League automatic bid into the NCAA Championships and will play Notre Dame (41-15) in an opening round game of the Michigan Regional on Friday.
The Vikings have won 22 of their last 26 games and currently hold a 35-16 record.

"One of our team goals this season was to win the Horizon League title and earn an NCAA bid,“ Nicholson said through a press release. “Now that we have achieved that, it is time to raise our sights a lot higher and go to Ann Arbor this week ready to play and advance … From the top of the lineup to the bottom, you can find a difference making effort from everybody. That's what it takes to be a champion."

Elyria’s Andrea Nagy preserved the championship win with a diving catch to end the game.

"That was the play of the game," Nicholson said. "If that ball gets down, it would probably go all the way to the wall and tie the game, but Andrea got a great jump on it and was able to sprawl out and make the catch."

This was the fifth time in the last seven years that the Vikings advanced to the title game, but CSU had failed to win a title. The only tournament title in CSU history came when the Vikings claimed the Midwestern Collegiate Conference title in 1997.

Nicholson (formerly McCall), who graduated from CSU in 2000, took over as head coach in the fall of 2006 and is the first head coach to lead CSU to back-to-back 30-win seasons. She was also named the Horizon League's co-Coach of the Year last season.

Nagy, a sophomore, has played in 44 games and has 19 starts. She is batting .250 with seven doubles, two home runs, 11 RBIs and 19 runs scored.

Elyria’s Megan Bashak, a freshman, has played in 33 games with 31 starts. She’s batting .340 with nine doubles, three home runs, 19 RBIs and 19 runs scored.

Keystone’s Jessica Burt started two games and went 2-for-4 (.500) with an RBI and a run, before a season-ending knee injury. Last year as a sophomore, she started all 49 games and hit .294 with 40 hits, six doubles, four triples, three home runs, 19 RBIs and 13 stolen bases.

Another Elyria native that will be joining the Vikings next season is Tess Sito, who was the Gatorade Player of the Year in Ohio last year. Sito is having another impressive season this year after going 27-2 with a 0.22 ERA last season. She was also a second team Louisville Slugger NFCA All-America choice, a two-time first team All-Ohio selection and a three-time All-Northeast Ohio Conference selection. And don’t forget the three Ohio State Championships she has led the Pioneers to.

"Tess is simply one of the best pitchers in the country," Nicholson said. "She throws hard with good location and will become even better once she learns the college game."

swalker@MorningJournal.com