How an ACC team established itself as an NCAA softball power in just a few seasons
Duke softball has accomplished more in eight seasons that what many ACC programs have in decades. Blue Devils coach Marissa Young is a big reason why.
DURHAM, N.C. — There are college teams that have been playing softball for decades that do not play in a stadium which features the decorations that Duke has.
This isn’t about a fancy press box, comfortable seating, a cool video board or state-of-the-art amenities — it’s what the Blue Devils have adorning their outfield walls. It’s a list of the program’s accomplishments: Seven All-Americans, two Atlantic Coast Conference Championships, five NCAA Tournament appearances, and one trip to the College World Series in Oklahoma City, which happened last year.
Here’s the remarkable note about those achievements: Duke’s softball program has only existed for eight years.
Comparing it to some of its peers in the ACC, what the Blue Devils have captured in less than a decade is astonishing. Georgia Tech has been playing softball since 1987 and has never been to a College World Series. Same goes for N.C. State, which started its program in 2004 and has the same number of postseason berths as Duke. Boston College, Syracuse, Pitt, Louisville, Virginia, Notre Dame and North Carolina have never advanced to a Super Regional — something Duke has done in three consecutive seasons.
Put more succinctly, the Blue Devils have established themselves as one of the ACC’s premier softball programs and are a rising power in a sport that is growing leaps and bounds in popularity. Last season, 2.5 million people tuned into the College World Series Finals, marking a 24 percent year-over-year increase and making it the most-watched ever.
Duke is trying to get back to that stage and began its journey there on Friday, flexing its muscles and showing off its balance of offensive power and defensive prowess in a 12-0 win over Howard, the champions of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference.
“I love that our team just continues to get better at the end of the year and play our best softball,” Duke coach Marissa Young, the architect of the program, said after the victory. “I think it was a big statement win to come out and dominate the way that we did.”
Junior left-handed pitcher Cassidy Curd tossed a two-hitter with six strikeouts in five innings, while senior shortstop Ana Gold slapped two home runs over the fence, driving in five runs.
“One of the things that I talked a lot about with Coach Young going into today was that the rest of the stuff that happened over the season didn’t matter,” Curd said. “Just going in there and remembering who I am and what I can do, and trusting all the work and preparation I’ve put in.”
It is this equity and harmony of precise pitching, strong defense, and an opportunistic offense that is eager to seize upon mistakes by the opposing team that makes Duke one of the best teams in the NCAA Tournament this year. The Blue Devils rank in the top 25 nationally in batting average (.332), fielding percentage (.974), shutouts (14), strikeout-to-walk ratio (2.60) and total hits (487).
Duke is seeded 14th in this NCAA Tournament and is also hosting Sun Belt champions Coastal Carolina and SEC power Georgia in its regional pod. It’s the fourth time that Duke has hosted games during the opening weekend of the softball postseason. The Blue Devils will face Georgia in their second regional game on Saturday afternoon.
To attempt to gain an edge on Duke, Howard coach Tori Tyson even deployed an unorthodox tactic by rotating in multiple pitchers every inning. It exactly didn’t work as the Blue Devils piled up nine hits and four walks. Against the Blue Devils’ Tyson’s pitchers just missed their marks too many times.
“With Duke, and much of the lower half of the country, if you throw a mistake it’s not going to be a bloop hit. It’s going to go to a different continent,” Tyson said. “You don’t get that pitch back. We knew that. There’s a small margin for error… They did exactly what we knew them to do. They’re going to swing at strikes and they’re going to take advantage of the middle. They’re not going to foul it off.”
Tyson said she’s been deploying this strategy for a few weeks and it helped power the Bison through the rest of the regular season where they had a 20-1 mark in MEAC play and won their third conference title. Young was impressed by Tyson’s audacity to try the scheme, complimenting her “chess match” strategy.
A former standout pitcher at Nebraska who grew up watching Young pitch in the Big Ten at Michigan, Tyson was proud to share the field with the Duke coach.
“I have this moment when you’re shaking hands and you’re sharing the field with women – especially women of color that have meant so much to me and been a perfect representation to me,” Tyson said. “Watching her battle through grief as a Black woman and a Black mom, man, it’s been everything. Now I’m in a home that she quite literally built. Bringing my team here is like a storybook for me and just a blessing. It means everything to me.”
After working as an assistant at Eastern Michigan and North Carolina — and before those stops as a head coach at NAIA side Concordia — Young was tapped by former Duke athletic director Kevin White to build the Blue Devils’ softball program from the ground up in 2016. Duke had been flagged and investigated for Title IX inequities a few times between 1997 and 2011, and the administration wanted to get back on track with compliance. One way to do that was to add women’s sports, which Duke did in 2013, announcing the coming addition of softball and also increasing scholarship slots for other women’s sports.
Young, a former Big Ten Pitcher and Player of the Year with the Wolverines, led her first Duke softball team onto the field in 2018. For some new programs, the road to success can be long and rough, but Duke had an overall record above .500 in its first season and went 13-11 in the ACC. In 2020, the Blue Devils started the season off 23-4 before it was canceled due to the pandemic. But the next year, Young kept Duke rolling and they appeared in the NCAA Tournament for the first time — starting a run of five consecutive postseasons that haven’t been played without Duke in it.
“I think we take a lot of pride in our defense, and so as much as the girls want to get up there and hit the home run, they want to make that ESPN play behind their pitchers,” Young said. “I think it really just shows the love that they have for each other. They play for each other.”
Gold, a 5-foot-7 native of Ballston Spa, New York, arrived on campus the next fall and has been a crucial ingredient of helping Duke take steps toward sustaining success and building a winning softball culture. When her senior year ends, she’ll leave the program as the Blue Devils’ career leader in home runs. She has 53 now, and aims to add a few more to that total before Duke’s season comes to a close.
“I think it’s just a testament to Coach Young and the program and culture that she’s built, and the girls really buying into it. It’s huge,” Gold said. “I just hope that it continues to build on.”
Curd came to Duke a year after Gold, off the heels of the Blue Devils advancing to their first Super Regional. She too has been a key part of Duke’s buildup as one of college softball’s recognizable brands, piling up a 45-14 record in three seasons with a 2.15 ERA. Against Howard, she had a no-hitter going into the fifth inning before the Bison notched a pair of infield singles.
Last season, the native of Port Lucie, Florida, led the ACC in ERA and notched both of Duke’s wins from the circle in Missouri, helping the Blue Devils punch their ticket to the World Series in Oklahoma City. This year, Curd is second in the ACC in strikeouts with 138.
“We have that experience now. It’s not our first rodeo,” Curd said. “Our main goal is just to continue to have fun, play our game, and it doesn’t matter who’s on the other side of the field, just show up for each other.”
It hasn’t all been easy for Young and Duke though, especially off the field. In May of 2023, her husband James Lamar suffered a heart attack as the Blue Devils competed in the Super Regionals. After being put on life support and a ventilator, more than two-dozen surgeries including heart and kidney transplants, he survived, but his recovery still continues.
Over the past few years, Young hasn’t just been a transformative coach for Duke, she’s been an important caretaker for her family. It makes what she’s accomplished with the Blue Devils all that more exceptional.
“I think that we’ve always had an idea of how important our core values are to set the foundation, and then it goes in motion. And no matter what the success or the journey has been, we’ve never wavered from those things,” Young said. “Our coaching staff does an incredible job of working really hard and preparing them for success. But ultimately, it’s the players that go out there and believe in how we prepare them.”
In Durham on Friday, it was humid and sticky with temperatures in the high 80s. But Young dressed for a cool and breezy day with a long-sleeve zip-up jacket. She was unbothered by the heat, undistracted by any outside circumstances, and coached her team to an impressive win to open the postseason.
“You got to look good to play good,” she said with a smile, borrowing the phrase popularized by Deion Sanders. “This has been a lucky fit, and we’re going to stick with it.”
Young hopes to be sporting that same outfit in June in Oklahoma City at the College World Series.
Getting to that stage of the tournament is no longer some unreachable dream for the Blue Devils. They’ve been there and the goal is to get back, and Young has instilled a deep belief in her players that it’s not just possible, but actually attainable. Eight years into their history as a program, Duke softball now has an expectation to keep playing deep into the postseason.