Faribault Softball Leads Big Nine Conference

The Faribault Falcon fastpitch softball team is unbeaten in Big Nine Conference action and leading the league with a 6-0 conference mark.  The Falcons have never won a conference championship in softball.  There are still a number of games left and with the quality of the conference a lot of great competition ahead.  Faribault says they wouldn't want it any other way.

During a recent visit on the Faribault Interiors Saturday morning prep show junior pitcher McKayla Armbruster told KDHL her team, "loves to play against great competition."  Senior Cassie Swanson added, "the Big Nine is an excellent conference for fastpitch."  All you have to do is point to last year when the Class 3A semi-finals featured two Big Nine Conference teams.  Hopes of a showdown between Section 1 Champion Winona and Section 2 title holder and Big Nine Conference champion Mankato West were dashed when Hermantown upset the top ranked Scarlets.  Winona went on to win the championship 9-2.

The Falcons host the Rochester John Marshall Rockets today and the game will be on POWER 96 Radio, 95.9 FM and www.power96radio.com.  Coverage begins 4:45 p.m. and this is a conference game. The best way to listen is to download the POWER 96 Faribault app on all your mobile devices.

The Rockets are coming off losses this week to Northfield (5-4) Monday and Mankato West (4-2) Tuesday.

Faribault has hit another gear this week with a 9-0 win over a good Rochester Mayo team in Rochester Monday and a 11-0 victory over Red Wing Tuesday.

Armbruster has obviously been very stingy since their season opening victory in the Austin dome.   Since that game Faribault has shut out 4 of the next 5 opponents and allowed a total of 1 run in the next five games.  Against Red Wing all 15 outs in the 5 inning game were strikeouts.  Armbruster was an infield single away from a perfect game.

Faribault had 12 hits and five of their batters had multi-hit games.  Ali Schak collected 2 hits and a double, Bre Bresnahan clubbed a pair of hits, Cassie Swanson smacked a two run homer in the first inning and added two more singles, Abby Van Ryn had 2 hits and a double and Abby Lake picked up 2 hits and a triple.

The last 11 years either Mankato West or Mankato East has been the Big Nine softball champion.  Rochester Mayo was the last team to win the league outside of Mankato in the spring of 2005

Here are the numbers of Big Nine Softball titles by school:

Mankato East 18 titles- latest 2012

Mankato West 13 titles including last five straight

Austin 9 titles- latest 2003

Rochester Mayo 2 titles- last 2005

Rochester John Marshall- 1 title 1993

Owatonna- 1 title 1993

Winona- 1 title 1984

All other Big Nine schools are seeking their first Big NIne Conference softball championship.