Aileen Morales’ rebuilding job leads Georgia Tech to NCAA softball tournament

With a record of 37-16, Tech will be in a four-team, double-elimination regional at Florida as the No. 2 seed. The Yellow Jackets will open play against No. 3-seed Wisconsin at 2 p.m. Friday in a game that will be televised on ESPNU. No. 1-seed Florida and No. 4-seed Canisius also are in the field.

For Morales and Tech, there is indeed much reason to feel satisfaction. Morales, whose exploits for the Jackets as an infielder earned her a spot in the Tech Hall of Fame, took over a team that had tumbled from its status as an NCAA regular and, in her fifth season, has returned Tech to the tournament for the first time since 2012.

“To see that hiatus as an alum is hard, but now to be able to be the group that’s brought us back to that level is extremely exciting,” Morales said. “I just feel very humbled and fortunate to be leading these people and to see their hard work pay off. You don’t always get to see those results.”

When Morales was hired in 2017 from a two-year stint as head coach at Radford, Tech had endured five consecutive years of losing seasons, including a 57-101 record in former coach Shelly Hoerner’s final three seasons. It was a long way from Tech’s peak, when the Jackets made the tournament every year from 2002-12, a streak that spanned coaches Kate Madden, Ehren Earleywine and Sharon Perkins. The Jackets won the ACC regular-season or tournament title nine times in that span.

“I felt like there was a lot we needed to work on, truthfully, if you’re going to look at that,” Morales said.

A significant development with this team is that Tech has two solid starting pitchers in Blake Neleman, a junior from Lassiter High in her third season as a starter, and Chandler Dennis, a junior from North Gwinnett High who came to Tech through the transfer portal last summer from Michigan. The two have started 46 of Tech’s 53 games, have ERA’s below 3.00 and have covered 82.4% of the Jackets’ innings. Having a 1-2 punch “took us a while,” Morales said.

“I think that’s been a huge difference maker, is having those two strong arms that we can put up there against anybody,” she said.

Two other integral building blocks are junior Emma Kauf, a two-time first-team All-ACC catcher, and senior Tricia Awald, another two-time All-ACC selection (at first base) who transferred from Kennesaw State. Awald holds school records for career doubles and walks and, through Sunday’s games, led Division I in walks per game and ranked third in on-base percentage.

Said Morales of Awald, “Having her for four years, I can’t say enough about how much her bat has been massive for us.”

Credit: Georgia Tech Athletics

Credit: Georgia Tech Athletics

Kauf was at the center of a high point of the season, Tech’s 12-3 mercy-rule victory over then-No. 16 Georgia on March 15 in Athens, going 2-for-4 with a three-run home run. Tech had lost 13 consecutive to the powerhouse Bulldogs, six by mercy rule. The last time that Tech had won in Athens was 2007, when Morales was a junior on the team.

Morales called it a “huge statement win” that players will someday tell their grandchildren about and that gained the attention of the state’s prospects. That holds importance with Morales, a graduate of Hardaway High in Columbus who, as much as any coach at Tech, has stocked her roster with in-state talent.

The win “put us back on the map, from a standpoint of when you’re recruiting in the state, it’s like, ‘We went in there, we went to Athens and we put a little whuppin’ on ‘em,’” Morales said.

The Jackets have succeeded doing the right things. They get on base – they ranked 19th in Division I in on-base percentage through last weekend’s games – and avoid mistakes in the field – 21st in the country in fielding percentage.

“It was just a matter of, if we could be a more solid defensive team, then that allows our pitchers to be more comfortable,” Morales said. “And once the pitching is elevated, then your defense is making more plays, and all those things go hand in hand. The offense is allowed to relax. I truly think it was about getting top-tier players in the state into our program so that we could develop them and then, obviously, put them together and build something.”

In Year 5, Morales has begun to fulfill the charge of athletic director Todd Stansbury, to build a team that consistently makes the tournament and advances.

For Morales, the regional in Gainesville, Fla., will be a surreal, full-circle moment. Her last game in a Jackets uniform was on the same field, in an NCAA regional in 2008.

“I’m sure I’ll feel a little bit of a way when we walk back there,” she said.