Ferris, Officially, Is In The NCAA Tourney

BIG RAPIDS – As expected, Ferris State University’s softball team was awarded a bid to the NCAA Division II Softball Tournament for the second consecutive year as announced Sunday afternoon.

In spite of coming up short, in a bid to successfully move through the winner’s bracket or escape from the loser’s bracket at the Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Tournament, the show goes on for the Bulldogs.

Ferris (30-16), co-regular season champions of the GLIAC (with Wayne State), is seeded sixth in the NCAA Division II Great Lakes Regional which will be hosted by No. 1 seed Southern Illinois-Edwardsville at Cougar Field in Edwardsville, Ill. The softball action is scheduled to begin Wednesday with the Bulldogs to take on a familiar foe: GLIAC rival Saginaw Valley State, the league’s tournament champion.

Defending NCAA Division II champion SIUE (45-9), winners of the Great Lakes Valley Conference Tournament, is seeded first in the region, Lewis (37-16) is second, Saginaw Valley (34-15) third, Wayne State (33-16) fourth, Indianapolis (37-26) fifth, Ferris sixth, West Virginia Wesleyan (50-18) seventh and West Virginia State (41-14) eighth.

In the end, there were not a whole lot of surprises as SIUE was one of the best and hottest teams in the nation by the end of the season and ultimately overtook a Lewis team that had occupied the top spot in the region much of the spring. SVSU’s hot play at the end of the spring, and two wins over Wayne State in the GLIAC Tournament (including one in the championship game), elevated the Cardinals past the Warriors. Indianapolis has been steady and holds solid at fifth while the Bulldogs did not budge from the sixth. An upset victory by West Virginia State in the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Association Tournament earned them the automatic bid and the eighth spot while West Virginia Wesleyan remains in the field and takes the seventh seed.

This is Ferris’ third trip to the NCAA Division II Tournament in the last four years and sixth overall for the program.