Bridgeport Tops ECC 2021 Softball Preseason Poll

West Babylon, N.Y -After an East Coast Conference Championship in 2019 and a strong start to an abbreviated 2020 season, Bridgeport has been selected as the favorite in the conference's Softball Preseason Poll. The coaches also selected Mercy's Hannah Mueller (Fair Oaks, Calif.) and St. Thomas Aquinas' Carissa Della Vecchia (Rochester, N.Y.) as the ECC Preseason Player and Pitcher of the Year, respectively. 

Bridgeport ran away with the poll's top spot after earning six of seven first place votes. The Purple Knights began the 2020 season with an 8-5 record in their quest to defend their ECC title before COVID-19 put a pause to sports throughout the country. Former All-Conference First Team honorees Elyssa Marmolejo and Kaira Ramon, as well as pitcher Kaite Burawski, who as a freshman was leading the ECC with four wins and 46 strikeouts when the season was canceled, are among the standouts back in 2021 for Bridgeport.  

St. Thomas Aquinas is the runner-up in the poll after earning the final first place vote and 36 points. The Spartans struggled out of the gate in 2020 but set a program record with 25 wins and ended a 12-year postseason drought in 2019.

Mercy at No. 3 and Molloy at No. 4 round out the expected ECC Championship participants. Queens and ECC newcomer, Staten Island, are tied for the No. 5 spot, while D'Youville, another first-year ECC member, wraps up the poll at No. 7.

Mueller earns the league's Preseason Player of the Year award for the second straight season. Mueller was off to a strong start in the 2020 campaign with a .367 batting average over 10 games. This comes after leading the ECC with a .456 batting average to earn Division II Conference Commissioner's Association (D2CCA) Honorable Mention All-America honors the year prior. Overall, Mueller takes a .410 career batting average over 105 career games played into the 2021 season.

Della Vecchia takes the Preseason Pitcher of the Year honor in her first season at St. Thomas Aquinas. She is no stranger to the ECC however, after playing the past two seasons at former conference member, New York Tech. Della Vecchia was dominant in two outings for the Bears during the 2020 season, with only four hits allowed to go along with 13 strikeouts and a 1.56 earned run average over 9.0 innings. This comes on the heels of a strong rookie campaign in 2019. That year, Della Vecchia was a three-time ECC weekly honoree, including earning Pitcher of the Week honors after tossing a no-hitter with 11 strikeouts against Molloy. She finished the 2019 campaign with a 6-5 record, a 3.09 earned run average and led the ECC in strikeouts per seven innings after compiling 84 over 79.1 innings pitched.

Look for the Purple Knights' 2021 season schedule to be released in the near future.

2021 ECC Softball Preseason Poll

( ) - first place votes

Preseason Player of the Year: Hannah Mueller, Sr., IF, Mercy
Preseason Pitcher of the Year: Carissa Della Vecchia, Sr., St. Thomas Aquinas