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NCAA WOMEN'S COLLEGE WORLD SERIESJune 6, 2012Courtney ConleyJennifer FentonAmanda LockePatrick MurphyJackie TrainaOKLAHOMA CITY, OKLAHOMA Alabama – 5 THE MODERATOR: Joining us we have Patrick Murphy and student‑athletes Courtney Conley, Jennifer Fenton, Amanda Locke and Jackie Traina. We'll start with a comment from Coach and then go to the floor with questions. COACH MURPHY: First, I just want to say thank you to everybody involved with the tournament. It was a heck of a run for us, a dream come true for everybody at Alabama, and I've got to congratulate Oklahoma on a heck of a year. I definitely think they'll be back. Patty does an awesome job. She never loses. She always wins. To me, consistency in a program like hers is the toughest thing to do, and she wins every single year. You never hear one negative word about her or her program. I just want to say congrats to them. For us, I don't think it's sunk in yet. It's been a long time coming. It's just been an incredible nine or ten days here in Oklahoma City, and each game just got better and better and better. I'm just thrilled with the championship. Q. You say a long time coming. How soon after you took over at Bama did you feel the program was ready to win a title? Did you start to wonder when it was going to come finally? COACH MURPHY: I definitely thought that. Second year of the program, we came here and Kelly Kretschman, and Shelley Laird, and Ginger Jones, a great team. Shelley was our first best pitcher that we recruited. You know, at the time, I kept telling everybody, I said, God I don't want to be a one‑hit wonder, be the one time to come to the World Series, because you never know. Then we got Stefanie Vanbrakle, then we got a kid named Kelsi Dunne, then we got a kid named Jackie Traina. I felt like if we kept going or coming back, we could win one. It just took eight times to get here, and it was eighth time was a charm. Q. Courtney, could you feel the momentum there when you came up to bat? Looked like you had them on the ropes. Did you feel like they were shaken? COURTNEY CONLEY: I feel like coming into this game we had something in us that we kind of took out. Coming up to bat was actually‑‑ it started with the rain delay. We were like, gosh, we want to play. We just want to be out there. That inning started and everybody just kept it going, kept it going. So it was great to have the momentum on our side. Q. Jennifer and Amanda, could you tell us what you did before the three‑hour rain delay before the game? AMANDA LOCKE: We just hung out and played cards. JENNIFER FENTON: We just did anything to stay loose. AMANDA LOCKE: Yeah, we did anything. We're such a close team. We're all best friends. It's not hard to put us in a room for three hours and for us to get along and have fun. We all love each other. We can make three hours pass easy. Q. Can you talk about the 12 or 13 minutes that they halted the game and you were out there jumping around and leading cheers and all of that? AMANDA LOCKE: We have something special. It's so special. The freshmen, they get it. Every single class get it's. Murph does a great job bringing the freshmen in. Just the camaraderie that we have, the 13 minutes seemed like two seconds. With our team, we have so much fun together. I think that fuelled the fire, really. From then on, there was no stopping us. We were 20 hearts beating together, and then we came back. JENNIFER FENTON: Before the 12 or 13 minutes, it was like momentum going. Keep going, momentum on our side. That's all we were trying to do is keep the momentum on our side. We came back after those 13 minutes and started scoring runs. Q. Jackie, looked like Keilani was having trouble with the ball in that inning. Was it slippery for you too there in the top of that inning? JACKIE TRAINA: The ball did get moist. I guess I learned how to deal with it. You've got to learn to deal with stuff like that. I practiced with that, I guess, wetness on the ball. But it didn't bother me. I had a towel. I was working with what I had because you can't let that stuff get in your head. You think about it, and it gets in your head, and you can't think about it, you have to brush that stuff aside. Q. Also, you guys said the other day you didn't want to put the pressure on yourself of playing for the SEC. But now that it's over, does that make it extra special for you? JACKIE TRAINA: Who wouldn't want to be the first SEC team to win it. It makes it that much better because you know you're going to be the first to do it. Q. Coach, you touched on it a little bit, but Oklahoma has four freshmen in the starting lineup and Ricketts and Shults are coming back. How good of a team can they be moving forward? COACH MURPHY: Oh, they'll be very good. I'm sure they're going to have great recruits coming in. They'll all get better, stronger, more smart about the game. They'll be very good for years to come. Q. Patrick, your batters were overmatched and they had two home runs. Can you talk about the killer instinct when your team saw an opening to completely turn the game around? COACH MURPHY: Like Amanda said, we were frustrated that we didn't get to play. That just energized us. The crowd got into it. We got into it, and we had some really good at‑bats. Amanda. Courtney Conley had the double to centerfield. Jess put it in the air. It was one right after the other. I think there were two outs, too. We did not look good in the first couple of innings. She struck out five of the first six, and it was 3‑0 before you blink. But that's a great quality of these young ladies. I don't think anybody was panicking. The little break helped us. They let off some steam and did some cheers, and it was like okay, we get to play again. Q. Amanda, can you walk us through that first at‑bat after the delay? What were you looking for? Was it hard to get that focus back in after that break? AMANDA LOCKE: I started off, we were doing cheers in the dugout and all of that. And I had everybody in my face saying get there up and just crush it. I wasn't really looking for a specific pitch. You know, two outs, she was having trouble with the ball a little bit because it was wet. I was being a little more patient. But then she started getting the strikes in there. I was shortening it up and trying to put the ball in play. Wasn't trying to do too much with it because there were two outs. So I was trying to put it in play. Q. Amanda, those cheers in front of the dugout, that something you've done before or is it something that you kind of came up with today to lead the crowd in those cheers? AMANDA LOCKE: No, sir, we cheer all the time. Yes, sir. The dugout's always going crazy. We call ourselves the Wolf Pack, you know. The fans, they had everything they could think of to make noise. We have the best fans in the country by far. I think we can all speak for that. Our fans are crazy, and we just cheer with them 24/7. We love it. Q. Coach, when we visited in the fall, went back and looked at that video, and one of the last things we talked about was the unfinished business of winning a national title. You joked, well, if I could change my last name, we've had some bad luck with Murphy's Law and all of that. But I don't think you had many costly errors. Just a handful of unearned runs for this whole weekend here. Great teams make their own luck at the end of the day. Can you talk about some of the intangibles and how the teammates picked each other up? Some of the things that don't show up in the box score that are a big part of the championship? COACH MURPHY: I think that's a huge part of it with the team, because we're not the most talented team here, I don't think. We're not the most highly recruited kids. They just play together. Team chemistry is huge for us. Servant leaders, what can I do for you, not what can you do for me? That's the very beginning of our program. I'd say the sooner you realize it's not all about you, the better off we're going to be, and your life and your relationships, especially on the team. 20 kids came together and the intangibles are everywhere. Jackie Traina is huge too because she's resilient as they come as a pitcher. She could have folded after the 3‑0, and the two home runs. But she said she's going to shut them out until that last inning, and we scored enough runs to win the game. Q. You've been here before as you mentioned so many times. Did you feel psychologically or emotionally that this team was going to be your best shot? COACH MURPHY: Yeah, I think so, especially with the six seniors. They were very even keeled. We weren't heavy on the younger kids. There was a good mix. But the seniors have been here for three years. I think they really kind of taught the other kids the ropes, and they stayed the course. They didn't deviate at all. We had the regular season that was very smooth. The postseason we won four tournaments in a row. Then we come here, and this is the last thing that we had not conquered, and they did it. Q. I guess for you and for the players, how much, if at all, how much was last year within a game of playing in the finals, and sort of the way the last season ended here? How much of that was a motivation as far as finishing and so forth? STUDENT‑ATHLETE: Last year was huge. Every year we've come here we've learned what it takes and what we need to do to get here. But learning from last year and knowing that we can come this far, we knew we not only got there, but we knocked it down and came together as a team. That's what it's about. Coming together as a team, and Coach Murphy always says the World Series is where you want to peak. We did that this year. I don't know. It's just amazing. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
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