Laker Softball team and Coach Nelson at the Region 24 Softball Tournament at the Southwestern Illinois College Softball field in Belleville, Illinois on Saturday, May 13, 2023. Photo via Laker Softball Twitter
Four on-campus athletes competed in the Pan-American Games this past month. All of the athletes are on the Laker Softball team. The four young ladies that took part of these Pan-American Games in Softball are: Dayerlin Rivas, who is from Venezuela and Maria Pizarro, Adriana Yamakawa and Maria Teruya, who are from Peru.
Rivas, Pizarro, Yamakawa and Teruya current positions on the softball team are shortstop, pitcher, pitcher and outfield respectively. Respectively, Rivas, Pizarro, Yamakawa and Teruya are majoring in business, psychology, industrial design and pre-law.
Laker softball coach, Gregory Nic Nelson, who is entering his fourteenth season as head coach, replacing Denny Throneburg, after spending one year as an assistant stated “the (four) women have a strong work ethic and desire to win.” Additionally, Nelson mentioned in regards to the four women who participated in the Pan-American Games for their respective countries, “the biggest adjust for them is learning to play the game as hard and as much as we (Lake Land) do.”
Furthermore, he explained that he was able to go overseas to recruit based on the contacts he has. For a living prior to coming on campus, Nelson from 2000-2010 “organize baseball and softball teams and travel around the world. I traveled to every continent except Antarctica. I have made a lot of connections overseas. Teams from other countries do not have travel teams. The countries treat each game like the Olympics since they are playing their national team. Each country tries to get their players to play college ball in the United States.”
The 2023 Pan-American Games took place from October 20th thru November 5th at Santiago, Chile. Santiago is the capital as well as the largest city in the country. There was a total of 425 events in 39 sports in the Pan-American Games. 41 countries within the Americas, or the western hemisphere partake in the event.
The softball games took place from Sunday, October 29th thru Saturday, November 4th, which was the finals, or the championship game. Eight countries, United States, Mexico, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Canada, Chile, Peru and Cuba. The United States won the gold medal followed by Puerto Rico, who won silver and Canada, which won bronze.
Let’s hope that the women Nelson recruits will enable the softball team to win the Region 24 Tournament for the first time since 2022, when the team finished with a 56-13 record. They also won the tournament in 2014 as well as four consecutive years from 2016-19. 2020 was cut short due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
