Softball Team is Ranked

Ottumwa -- When the Indian Hills Community College softball team heads south for their season-opening trip later this month they’ll do so as a nationally-ranked team. The Warriors are ranked 19th in the National Junior College Athletic Association’s pre-season poll.

Indian Hills is coming off a season in which they were 33-24 and won the Region 11 and District K championships and qualified for the NJCAA National Tournament.

It’s the first time that Indian Hills has been ranked in the preseason in Jim Overturf’s four years as head coach at IHCC. He calls it “an honor” to be rated, saying, “It just shows how hard our teams have worked the last three years to get the program to this point.”

Overturf was quick to add, “The ranking puts a bulls-eye on our back for the teams we’ll play, especially early in the season, and we’ll have to work even harder. It’s a lot more important where we finish.”

The Warriors return nine players from last year’s national tourney team. They open the spring schedule with five games in the Tiger Fest in Booneville, Mississippi Feb. 25-26.

They’ll play a top-10 team there in Copiah-Lincoln CC and will face four other teams that are ranked in the preseason polls in Division I and II. Indian Hills also will likely play a handful of other rated teams in regular-season tournaments.

The softball team is one of two IHCC teams to receive a preseason national ranking. The Warrior golf team is ranked No. 1.