For the first time in program history, Tennessee softball is the unanimous No. 1 team in the country, sweeping the top spot in all four major polls.
This comes after Karen Weekly’s Lady Vols squad got off to a 10-0 start over the course of a pair of trips to Clearwater, Florida. During this time, UT defeated six ranked foes and multiple top-10 opponents.
Weekly isn’t worried about the rankings, though. Frankly, she said she doesn’t care, and the team has reciprocated that message. Instead, she’s hoping her team can stay focused on the process that has earned them this fast start.
“The message is, we care about things we can control,” Weekly said. “We can’t control rankings, we can’t control polls and we don’t care about them. We care about each other and we care about dominating our process. Outcomes, our record right now, scores, they’re all a byproduct of us working hard every day in practice, staying in the present when we’re in games, failing and recovering quickly from those failures. Just keeping a very, very simple, narrow focus at the job at hand. The better we do that, those outcomes have a chance of being good. Once we start focusing on outcomes, results, rankings, things don’t go so well. That’s really the message I have for the team and the message they reciprocated to me is we don’t care about that. We care about our process.”
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As Tennessee looks to keep the ball rolling in the pre-conference slate, Weekly is asking her team to be emotionally detached from the results. Don’t get too high after wins or too low after losses.
While she’s having a great time winning, that didn’t stop her from showing displeasure during the trip to Clearwater. She mentioned there was a game that her team won, but it wasn’t a celebration afterward. She was upset with how it transpired.
“I don’t know how you could not enjoy winnings,” Weekly said. “I think the key for us is winning and learning at the same time. Inky Johnson, there’s a clip where he talks about, can you stay committed to the process without being emotionally attached to the results? Initially, when you see that, you’re thinking about somebody who is not getting good results and now can you get down and negative and stray.
“The same is true for when your results are good. Can you stay committed to your process and not allow good results to then lead to expectations that aren’t going to get you anywhere? For us, it’s not about being 10-0, it’s more about we evaluate every day how we’re playing. The girls will tell you, there was a game we won and I said, I’m not happy, because we didn’t do this, this and this that are all process-based things.”
Next, Tennessee will play in the UAB Tournament. The Lady Vols will play Missouri State, UAB, Mercer and Southern Illinois in the event next weekend. Then, UT will host the Tennessee Invitational with Appalachian State (twice), Penn State (twice) and North Carolina Central on the schedule.
