Princeton University Athletics
A Return Trip: Barron Leads Tigers to Louisiana, Site of Princeton's First NCAA Appearance
June 23, 2006 | General
May 17, 2006
By Andrew Borders
Princeton Athletic Communications
Twelve years later, Maureen Barron is back in Louisiana.
As soon as she stepped off the plane in Baton Rouge Wednesday, memories of that May weekend a dozen seasons ago were sure to hit her with the first breath of thick Southern air and the first bite of a spicy Cajun meal. Then, she was Maureen Davies, a freshman pitcher helping the Princeton softball team to its first NCAA tournament appearance. Now, the program returns to the Bayou for the first time since that 1994 postseason. Barron is the head coach, leading 17 disciples on the first step to college softball's promised land for the fourth time in five seasons.
More memories will come as soon as she hears the raucous cheers of the purple-and-gold faithful at Louisiana State, the host of this weekend's NCAA regional. The festive atmosphere will remind her of Lafayette, La., just 50 miles down Interstate 10 from Baton Rouge, where she threw her first postseason pitch. That program, in its current incarnation as the Ragin' Cajuns of Louisiana-Lafayette, is in Baton Rouge this weekend too as part of the four-team regional with LSU, Princeton and North Carolina State.
"The fans were amazing," Barron says. "It was like a football game at Tennessee. It was an exciting venue and it'll be like that this weekend. The challenge in an environment like that is keeping your focus between the white lines."
Barron should know a thing or two about Tennessee and needing to keep her focus on the field. It will be a little more difficult this weekend with an important part of her daily life staying back in New Jersey and missing an event so landmark to her personally and professionally. Richard Barron, her husband and the head women's basketball coach at Princeton, will be staying home to keep a hold on the couple's twin toddler girls. An Ivy League champion coach in his own right this season, Barron spent his teenage years in Knoxville, home of the University of Tennessee. The couple returned there in December when Richard matched his Tigers against the Lady Vols."The travel is difficult on Lane and Rae and Richard will be busy with his own team, too," Maureen says.
As Richard and Maureen can attest, being a collegiate head coach and balancing a family isn't always easy. Even though it might seem routine after four NCAA appearances in five years, the challenges got tougher this week with preparations for the tournament taking over.
"It's somewhat easier knowing what you're getting into, but there are so many things people don't think about. There are the travel arrangements that we have to make. There's drawing up the itinerary, getting everyone on the travel party together," Barron says. "It seems like I spent more time doing that stuff than coaching this week."
There's also something else family-related that everyone with a good seat at Tiger Park is sure to notice this weekend. Barron is expecting her third child, due in August.
"It doesn't change things much beyond the physical things I wish I could do, like throw batting practice. I feel great and everyone in the softball community has been very friendly and supportive," Barron says.
But for a weekend, with her own family back in the Northeast, Barron will turn her attention to her adopted children, those wearing the Orange and Black. Though they aren't all neophytes at the postseason thing like Barron was in this state in 1994, the situation is a little different than a midweek game with Lehigh.
"LSU has a reputation for having very spirited fans," says someone who should know, junior Betsy Allaway. She comes from a locale synonymous with the Southeastern Conference, Tuscaloosa, Ala., where her father is a professor at the University of Alabama and where her mother is an alumna. The current Tigers have had a taste of the SEC too, the seniors having been freshmen when they split a pre-conference doubleheader at Tennessee in 2003.
But an early-spring game in Knoxville is still a far cry from the postseason in Baton Rouge against LSU, a team that has been to two of the last five Women's College World Series. Barron and the Tigers will take their cuts knowing the current group has plenty of experience with major-conference programs. This season, Princeton dropped a 1-0 decision at Stanford, a seeded team in this year's NCAA tournament, with senior pitcher Erin Snyder scattering seven hits.
After four years under Barron's tutelage, Snyder has piled up 803 strikeouts in her career, topping Barron's record of 561 early this season. She carries other gawdy numbers, like a strikeout-to-walk ratio of almost 35:1 and a second straight Ivy League Pitcher of the Year award, into the weekend's tournament with a fear of no program, regardless of its growing resume of national success.
The talent extends much deeper than Snyder. Princeton boasted eight All-Ivy honorees this season and the four first-team honors were the most since 1996, the second of two seasons in which pitcher Barron led Princeton to the WCWS. The Orange and Black nabbed both first-team all-league pitcher honors between Snyder and sophomore Kristen Schaus, who is the single-season strikeout record holder for now with 244 Ks to Snyder's 242 this year. Designated player Calli Jo Varner also picked up first-team plaudits as did Ivy League Rookie of the Year Kathryn Welch. Barron won both league specialty awards in her playing days, picking up the rookie award in 1994 and the pitching award in 1996.
Barron will have the opportunity this weekend to tell her team about a distant day in a not-so-distant town in which she, too, had her first experience with the unique Louisiana culture and the carnival-like atmosphere at the state's college sporting events. Princeton went 1-2 that weekend in Lafayette and had its postseason run ended with two losses to Utah. Little did they know, it was just the first step on the road to national prominence and two WCWS appearances in the coming seasons.
The crowds will be loud this weekend in Baton Rouge, the cheers coming from purple-and-gold-clad crazies as they were from the Ragin' Cajun faithful a decade ago. Cheers of "Geaux Tigers" will roll from the bleachers and while it won't be meant for the Ivy Leaguers, the Orange and Black will undoubtedly agree.