Spring Recap

I've mentioned here and there on the Maverick Rambler that certain sports don't get the same coverage that others do, particularly the individual sports. It's usually because either they are result-driven sports like cross country and the best I could usually offer is the result (no better than UTAMavs.com) or it's not a sport I have a decent knowledge base in to comment on the team, such as tennis or golf. I understand the basics, but offering anything else would expose that knowledge deficiency. 

So today, I'm going to kind of rapid fire a little about the results with a smidge of commentary about the spring sports. It's at least enough to give them a spotlight, while also setting up the next entry later this month or early June. I'll go in chronological order.

Softball's Changeover

The regular season has concluded for the UT Arlington softball team and for the first time in six years, UTA will have a winning record. At 24-21, regardless of the results in the upcoming Western Athletic Conference tournament, the Mavericks are guaranteed to have more wins than losses. A late 3-8 stretch last year put the UTA one game below .500.

This year came on the strength of a 12-6 conference mark. With a .667 winning percentage, that is the best conference mark since the COVID year's 2-1 mark. The last in a full season was a 20-10 mark in 2011 during the Southland Conference era. In the Sun Belt, there weren't many winning conference seasons, but 2019's 17-10 mark was the high-water mark. It's the first winning WAC season in five tries, including the lone year in 2013.

The results came on the backs of a relentless offense. UTA hit 59 home runs this year, a program best. In the WAC, second-place Tarleton State hit 42 for comparison. What's impressive, is UTA's 45 games played is last in the WAC. The range is a high of 55 by TSU and California Baptist (the top two teams in the WAC standings) to a low of 47 by sixth-place Southern Utah. Keep that in mind for the following stats.

In addition to being first in home runs, UTA sits second in runs with 304, second in RBI with 268, second in slugging percentage at .519, third in hit by pitches at 35 and third in on base percentage at .390. Had they played the same number of games as TSU and CBU, many of those stat categories see UTA at the top. Also note, these numbers were gathered with one game left for every other team in the conference and are subject to change.

With such a dominant performance, of course there will be some players atop the conference.

What about Softball?

Yesterday, I mentioned the UT Arlington baseball team opened conference play this weekend. The softballers, whose season starts a week earlier, are in the middle of Western Athletic Conference play. The season has been interesting, but not the rollercoaster ride of their male diamond counterparts.

At 15-17 on the year, the team has done well in some games, then dropped the ball, intended figuratively, in other games. But, the important record, 4-2 in WAC play is good.

At 192 in RPI, UTA is fifth out of the seven team conference race. UTA beat Abilene Christian at their place 2-1 to start conference play, winning the first two before dropping the rubber match. That formula was repeated in Arlington against Tarleton State. ACU is well below UTA in the RPI rankings currently at 235, compared to UTA’s 192. The Texans, however, are 154. That is a good series win.

Like in years past, this team has strengths and weaknesses. I don’t know what it is, but pitching has been problematic. California Baptist leads the conference with a 3.02 earned run average. Utah Valley is under five and in second place. Southern Utah and TSU are third and fourth with ERA’s in the five. UTA is fifth at 6.52. Utah Tech is a quarter of a run behind and poor ACU is last in the nine’s.

Hoops, Track and Diamond Updates

It's been a while for the Maverick Rambler, there was a perfect storm of factors the last month or so. First, as happens every year, February and March has the most activity from the UT Arlington Athletic Department than any other point. Both basketball teams are in the final stretch, baseball and softball started their seasons as did the tennis teams. The Western Athletic Conference meet occurred for the indoor track teams. That is 8 of the 15 programs (17 now I suppose with the wheelchair basketball teams). I don't really cover golf, as I'm not much of an enthusiast and covering them would be generic at best, but I believe their seasons have started too. I always get paralysis of options this time of year. Several ideas at once ironically leads to less coverage and writer's block.

Secondly, I volunteer at my son's school to do public address for the basketball teams. He just finished his first year on the varsity team in the playoffs and that took a lot of my personal time. These are moments I won't get back as a dad as I walk the path so I'm doing my best to treasure it while it goes on.

Third, I had a personal matter pop up a couple of weeks ago that both required lots of my time and attention, while also stifling my motivation to write.

And the fourth reason... Candidly, things just haven't been going well as a whole. I'll touch on each team in this post, something I generally don't like doing. But I've seen the blasé feeling is shared by other Mav fans too. Some good things are happening as well, so I don't want to sound all bad.

End of November Quick Hits

I wanted to touch on a number of sports for this week, so instead of doing half a dozen separate blog entries of varying lengths, I'm going to wrap all of them into this is one single entry. I don't normally do that, but I suspect that will prevent a post overload that I feel would have happened with six in a short period of time. I'll go in chronological order to avoid confusion.

-THE WOMEN'S VOLLEYBALL season ended a week ago. Prior to the start of the Western Athletic Conference tournament, the All-WAC teams and postseason accolades were given. Even though there were two Maverick players leading the conference in their respective stat categories, I wasn't expecting a player of the year honor for the team, given its fifth of seven finish in conference. Junior setter Mira Ledermueller was first in the WAC in assists with 896 and assists per set at 9.05 to conclude the regular season. Second place had 860 and 7.89 respectively. Junior libero Samantha Glenn had 422 total digs in the regular season, good for second in the conference and had 4.18 digs a set, good for first. 

What irked me is neither made an all-conference team. Senior outside hitter Jalie Tritt was a second-team member. There were two freshmen on the All-Freshman team: middle blocker Sophia Krichev and middle blocker Camryn McMinn.

Conversation with an AD Part Four - Sports Quick Hits

The first three parts of my sit-down interview with UT Arlington Athletic Director Jon Fagg focused on a near singular topic each. As the interview reached the half way mark, the topics came closer in time and at a quicker pace. There has been a small delay in the release of part four as I originally envisioned part four being the last portion. However, the post itself started becoming too long. 

As we transition from the topic of football, we started discussing the sports we have on campus.

The Maverick Rambler: Well let's talk about pouring the efforts into, into men's basketball.

Jon Fagg: Yeah, sure.

Top Five 2024/25 Moments

 As July transitions into August, the end of the collegiate summer doldrums is in sight. Volleyball opens the 2025/26 athletic season at the end of the month. While many schools have been analyzing the offseason moves of their respective football team or pontificating on whether a new coach was the right hire, we UT Arlington Maverick fans are gauging if UTA can repeat as WAC champs on the volleyball court or looking for pieces to the basketball schedules.

As fall is still a lonely time for Mavs, that doesn't diminish the anticipation some have for the upcoming year. With that constraint, let's look back at past year and see the top five moments from 2024/25.

There will be some guidelines I will impose on the list. First, no team can have more than one moment. Without that constraint, it is probable that one team could own multiple spots and the list would rapidly lose balance. Second, this list will be constrained to athletic feats or milestones. For example, as excited as I am about women's flag football coming next season or as newsworthy as the Western Athletic Conference transforming to the United Athletic Conference was, they will be excluded from this list. Third, it doesn't have to be performance or scoreboard based, just has to revolve around a program at UTA.

With that framework set, let's start the countdown.

2025 Diamond Quickhits

I wanted a fuller post on the end of the softball season and the second-to-last weekend of the baseball regular season, but big news dropped out of the UT Arlington Athletic Department today that will take the bulk of my limited time to produce these entries.

The softball team ended their season with a 4-1 loss to the host California Baptist Lancers in the Western Athletic Conference tournament. I really dislike the WAC's format, as the first games by the five through eight seeds are single-elimination, but UTA ends the year on a 4-13 slide and a once promising winning season, which hasn't happened since 2019, eluded UTA again. The Mavericks finished 24-25 on the year,

The baseball team kept their theme intact for the year. They lost a weekend series 1-2 at the last-place team in the WAC. After winning 11-1 in eight innings against Utah Tech, to open the three-game set UTA dropped game two 10-8 and game three 9-7.

Limping Towards the End

In the recent UT Arlington softball posts, I have mentioned the downward trend the team is on as the season comes to a close. The trend did not reverse itself this past weekend in the season finale and senior day at Allan Saxe Field. 

Heading into the series, UTA was 23-22. They are hoping for their first winning season since 2019. They were playing a team tied with them in the standings at their own friendly confines. They were playing for their seniors at home. All the pieces were there for a bump heading to the Western Athletic Conference tournament in Riverside California.

Coming into this weekend, UTA had won two of its last 12 games. After climbing to 21-10 and 6-3 in the WAC, the Mavericks looked like they were on pace for their best season in a while. But a sweep at the hands of Grand Canyon and series losses to Utah Valley, California Baptist, Southern Utah and now Seattle have put that in jeopardy

UTA will need to go at least 3-2 in the conference tournament for that winning record or split to avoid a losing season. There's an additional impediment that the other teams aren't facing to reach that goal.

The Slide Continues

The UT Arlington softball team was hoping for a redemption weekend on the road against the University of Southern Utah and they were on pace for it, but for the first time that I have personally witnessed, UTA was just as big an impediment to a win as their opponent.

Going into the series, both teams were 8-10 in the Western Athletic Conference and fighting for positioning in the standings and the upcoming conference tournament. With two series left, it was a pretty big weekend.

In game one, things went about as expected. The Mavericks won 14-5 in an abbreviated five innings. The offense scored in every inning but the fourth, culminated by five in the second inning and six runs in the third. Utility Junior Marley Nieses, Sophomore catcher Mia McNulty and utility Sophomore Kaitlyn Sailor each hit a home run. Sixth-year pitcher Emilie Hoelscher picked up the win.

Shooting Blanks

I normally don't like putting two sports in the same post for a few reasons. One of those reasons is I try to try keep a theme to the post and different sports and/or teams tend to be on different trajectories or have different personalities. However, this past week, both the baseball and softball teams from UT Arlington had a very similar performance. Each had a winless weekend. While I could put up two shorter posts rather than one medium one, the theme seems fitting to keep them together.

In last week's softball entry, I noted how there was a bit of a slide entering the weekend after a really good start to the season, losing the previous two Western Athletic Conference series, winning one and losing two in consecutive weekends. Well, this past weekend was worse overall. With the ever-hated Grand Canyon Antelopes coming to Allan Saxe Field, UTA had a chance to make a little bit of noise, but it did not pan out. 

On Friday, UTA lost consecutive doubleheader games in a run-rule fashion, 3-11 and 1-10, each ending after six innings. Sophomore pitcher Abi Gutierrez started the first game and went five innings, giving up eight runs, six earned, in the loss. Sixth-year pitcher Emilie Hoelscher started the second and had a nearly equally rough outing, 5.2 innings pitched, nine runs given up, six earned. UTA never had a lead in either game.

Hitting a Stride

The UT Arlington softball team may well be the most surprising team of the current athletic season. The volleyball team won a regular season and tournament crown, bucking a general UTA trend of disappointing performances in the postseason in all sports, but were picked second in the preseason polls. The cross country teams finished in the approximate position of their pre-race picks prior to the conference race. Same with the indoor track teams. The women's basketball team was like the volleyball girls. The men's basketball team may be in the running, but in today's era of transfers nothing surprises me regardless of the preseason pick.

This blog entry would have been a little more on topic two weeks ago, but consecutive 1-2 weekends have dropped their position in the Western Athletic Conference standings. Picked in a tie for seventh in the WAC, the Mavs are currently in a tie for third. After five straight losing seasons, they are currently 22-16 overall and 8-7 in the WAC.

Looking at the stat lines for the team, there is no one dominant reason for the over .500 record. What we have seen over the last few weeks has been team play, getting a timely hit or out when needed, stiff defense and a general improvement in the team performance.

Diamond Addendum

The transition between the outline of the last post and the written word left off a very important point that applies to both the baseball and soft squads at UT Arlington. I initially thought I'd add the info into its own comment below the post, but there's a lot to it and its deserving of its own blog entry.

With the struggles the two teams have experienced the last few years, especially since they downgraded conferences from an RPI perspective, there has been a very notable metric that suffered this year, reversing a decade climb.

In 2024, the baseball team averaged 378 fans, the third straight decline in attendance, discounting the COVID year where every game drew 314 in the box score. It was the lowest since 2014's 352. Their time in the Sun Belt was generally positive for fans in the seats, nearly doubling the totals the team saw while in the Southland Conference. The highest year was 618 spectators per game in 2017. 2019 saw 591 and 2020 drew 606 fans before COVID cancelled the remainder of the schedule. 

Diamond Disappointments

 Between the conference tournament drop off in men's basketball and the situation surrounding the passing of my dad, I'm not going to post much regarding the spring sports this year. Congrats to the men's tennis team on the defense of their Western Athletic Conference title. They will be the only sport to bring a title and play in the postseason this year. The track teams performed well in their outdoor meets as well. Both golf teams were top of the bottom half with some marked performances that give cause for hope.

But the baseball and softball teams had less than stellar seasons in 2024. Despite the hype I heard regarding the baseball team heading into the year, they earned 22 wins versus 34 losses. I didn't hear much about the softball team in the preseason either way. They earned one more win than their baseball counterparts against the same amount of losses.

There's quite a bit to break down with the baseball results. First, UTA performed poorly in mid-week games. Once conference play started in the second weekend in March, they went 2-10 in non-conference play. Factoring out Houston, which was a weekend series due to the WAC having an odd number of teams, they were 1-8 in mid-week games during that stretch. I don't know what has happened to UTA baseball, but that's the second time in three years with that bad a non-conference stretch. Last year's wasn't much better either, just not this bad.

But the losses weren't blowouts. There were six total one-run losses, eight losses by two runs, two losses by three runs and six losses by four runs. That's 22 of 34 losses by a grand slam or less.

December Quick Hits

There are a few of topics to cover, but none are exactly a full posts length. Time to dust of the quick hits segment.

-The volleyball team finished its season at 21-11 with a second-round loss to UT El Paso in the National Invitational Volleyball Tournament. The Miners beat the Mavs in 4, 18-25, 25-23, 13-25 and 21-25. The score variation encapsulated what the Mavericks program has been of late. Scoring as little as 13, but winning a set, versus the UTEP's variation of two, winning three and losing one by 23. UTA had a lead in every set but the third, trailed 15-17 in the first and had a 15-14 lead in the fourth. Mav Nation has seen a lot of that type of inconsistency the last two decades or so.

It also contrasted with the three sets to none win in the first-round. Florida Atlantic's 18, 22 and 20 scores meant the Mavs defense was pretty consistent. I'd say it was the best all-around match of the year. 

Softball's Rollercoaster Return to the WAC

With UT Arlington's doubleheader sweep of Sam Houston this past Saturday in softball, the Mavericks concluded the 2023 season, the first in the Western Athletic Conference since 2013. There were some highs and some equally rough lows.

I'll start with this: I don't know what I expected from this team. They lost a lot of offense from last year, but the two main starting pitchers returned. Softball arms don't tire as easily as their baseball counterparts and the pitching really is dominated by a select few players. They were picked ninth in the preseason poll. They finished seventh.

I don't put stock in the polls, especially in this era of roster turnover (admittedly less than football or the two basketball sports) as well as the constant conference changes. However, the Mavericks were not far off, finishing with the seventh seed. However, due to some of those aforementioned low, there were some real head scratching moments, it could have been much, much better.

A Nice Slate of Games

Like I mentioned in the baseball companion entry, the Christmas season took priority over my hobbies. Like the baseball team, the UT Arlington softball team released their schedule for the upcoming season. Unlike their baseball counterparts, the Mav softballers have some local teams and big names coming to Arlington.

The season starts with four games, two each against Texas Tech and Tulsa in Arlington. Two good tests against two good teams to start the season. 

The next week, they go north to Denton. The UTA site shows three games. The North Texas website shows the Green playing six games and when I check the Tracy Beard Classic website, there are six teams. No official schedule, but the teams include UTA, North Texas, Kentucky, McNeese State, Sam Houston State and Texas A&M-Corpus Christi. Interesting that the six teams represent four conferences. I wonder if they will play each other or if there's scheduling agreements to avoid it.

Top 10 moments in Maverick History

As we near the end of the summer break and the start of the 2022/23 athletic year, excitement is naturally building. Add in the fact that UTA is moving to a new home and will see new faces adds to that excitement.

In preparation for that start, I'm going to list the top 11 moments in Maverick Athletic history. For this list, I'm going to balance what the moment meant for the Department or the University as a whole, the general accomplishment's worth, the attention the accomplishment gathered and what it means today,. While the attention metric starts to sway the meter towards certain sports, I'm going to grade on a curve. I believe that if you are going to sponsor a sport, sponsor it to win. As such, any accomplishment is worthwhile.

Certain accomplishments could diminish others, for example, a postseason win could overshadow a previous high of first conference championship. Others are harder to grade, such as individual sports like the track and field programs. As such, I'm focusing primarily on team sports.

All that said, let's start the countdown.

Another Coach Leaves

 On this week, in As the UTA Coaches Carrousel Turns, another sport is looking to replace a head coach. At the beginning of the month, the UT Arlington Athletic Department announced that PeeJay Brun was resigning after five seasons of running the program. 

Unlike Coach Darrin Thomas' resignation, this one doesn't move the needle as much for me. Coach Thomas was at UTA when I was a student broadcaster and I built a casual relationship with him. He was in the department for over 20 years. He had a decent run a little less than midway through his career. Conversely, he also was facing a growing call of Maverick fans wanting a change at the helm. There's not much of the latter that I was aware of with Coach Brun.

Some similarities do exist however. Both are spring sports where UTA has traditionally done well. Both led programs that have all-time winning records. Both replaced a head coach who finished sub-.500, but whose predecessor prior won less than they lost. Both ended their time in Arlington with two, full losing seasons in a row after the NCAA shut down 2020 play in the spring. And finally, both play in the toughest mid-major conference, if not the toughest, in the NCAA. The Sun Belt top-to-bottom can compete with any team in the NCAA.

But Thomas also made an NCAA tournament (though one in 15 years isn't a resume builder), won a conference title (again, just one), and a Sun Belt Division championship. While SBC softball hasn't split into divisional play while UTA was a member, the rest of the softball accolades are pretty bare, with one exception.

Change at the Top

In addition to the new(ish) conference change coming up, UT Arlington will experience some new leadership in two key areas. While I can't specifically say what the moves mean individually, I see any change given the current situation is a positive. 

Jennifer Evans-Cowley was named the sole finalist for the UTA presidency on January 7th. Due to state rules, the UT system Board of Regents completed the formality on February 1st, where she officially became the 10th president. Her official start date is April 28th, though I've heard some rumors she may unofficially begin before that.

She replaces Dr. Teik Lim, who was the interim president for the last two years. He took a position as president of New Jersey Institute of Technology. 

Evans-Cowley comes to UTA from the University of North Texas. She was the Vice President of Academic Affairs and was a Provost. She had applied for many positions across the country and her resume has been circulated.