Softball: Coach Evans gets her 1000th and 1001st career wins

COLLEGE STATION – One thousand.

With the victory over Wisconsin in the Texas A&M Invitational, Coach Jo Evans recorded her 1000^th career win. She became the only active coach in the SEC to earn this accomplishment as a D1 coach.

Back in 1986, Evans recorded her first win as a head coach at Colorado State. Since then, she’s amassed win after win there, at Utah, and here at Texas A&M, where she has been since 1997.

How did she earn this milestone today?

The number 13^th ranked Aggies started slowly as the Badgers jumped out on them quickly with two home runs in the first three innings. After that, there wasn’t another run scored for the Badgers, and the Aggies put it on them.

Victoria King Senior Cassie Tysarczyk went 5-7 on the day with six RBI's and one home run. {"Module":"photo","Alignment":"right","Size":"large","Caption":"Senior Cassie Tysarczyk went 5-7 on the day with six RBI\u0027s and one home run.","MediaItemID":31569}

Senior Cassie Tysarczyk got the runs started for the Aggies with a standing double which scored both April Ryan and Nicole Morgan. In the next inning, Nicole Morgan got an RBI of her own, scoring Emily Albus, and Allison Garrett scored pinch running for Breanna Dozier on an overthrown ball resulting in an error. In the 5^th, the Aggies did not stop. Taran Tyler singled, and Lanphear knocked her and herself in with a two run homer. That’s how the scoring would end for the game. The final score was 6-2 in favor of the Aggies.

As the game approached its end, neon-yellow highlight papers were handed out to the entire crowd to help celebrate Evans’ 1000^th victory. The team then gathered around and took a picture to help remember the moment, before departing to prepare for the second game of their doubleheader against the University of Connecticut.

UConn came in with only a 1-7 record, so the Aggies were heavily favored. Unlike the last game, the Aggies got off to a strong start, scoring two runs in each of the first two innings behind some strong hitting from Tysarczyk, Ryan, and Jenna Stark.

Katie Marks was phenomenal on the day, once again. She only let up three hits, and the sole run came off of a home run late in her time in the circle. Her record now improves to 7-0 on the season.

“It was nice to see Katie just bear down and relax,” Evans said of her winning pitcher. “You could see her speed up the game, and it was nice to see the defense get her out of jams and her getting the defense out of jams.”

The game ended with a 6-1 victory for the Aggies over the Huskies.

MVP’s for the day were Marks, Tysarczyk, Nicole Morgan, and, of course, Coach Evans. Morgan reached base on all but one at-bat today, and, with her patience, walked on six different occasions. She also had a hit and a run on the day.

Cassie Tysarczyk went 5-7 on the day, including six RBI’s, one run, and one home run.

As for Evans…one thousand is kind of a big number. There’s no doubt that today is about her and the great job she has done coaching over the years. She now has 1001 wins. She’s well on her way to 2000 wins now.

“This is a special place,” said Evans. “I tell people I fell in love with Texas A&M. I consider myself very fortunate to be at the helm of this program. It’s a special place to be. It’s really fun to do it with this ball club. It’s a ball club that I really enjoy coaching and I’m very fond of them.”

The Aggies will face Texas A&M-Corpus Christi tomorrow at 11:15 in the morning as they close out the Texas A&M Invitational.