Dugout Shenanigans Are Just Good Clean Fun for Gamecock Softball

May 23, 2018

During its march to the 2018 NCAA Super Regional, you might suspect the South Carolina softball team is all business in the dugout on game day. You’d be wrong. Shenanigans in the dugout are as common as bubble gum and batting helmets.

“They play their best ball when they’re loose, and they’re having fun,” said head coach Beverly Smith. “Some of the girls on the team have taken it upon themselves as their role to make sure they’re keeping the team loose. They’re laughing in the dugout. If you’ve seen us play, the girls are having a great time.”

“It started a couple of months ago,” said senior Jordyn Augustus, the leader of the shenanigans brigade. “One game, coach said ‘we need some more runs.’ All season we were making (imaginary) bon fires with the bats, so one day, I decided I was going to bring real marshmallows to the field, graham crackers, chocolate and a lighter. So, we made some legit smores!”

Augustus was kind enough to offer a treat to an SEC Network sideline reporter and umpire as well. Both declined.

“After that we realized, maybe we shouldn’t use the lighter, so we said we’d just use whatever is in the dugout,” Augustus said. “One day, there was a random roll of toilet paper there, so I thought, ‘hmm, what can I do with this?’ I took it as a sign that I needed to do something.”

Augustus isn’t alone however, as freshman Alex Fulmer and redshirt freshman Alexis Lindsey aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty to help the team.

“I play the role of, whatever Jordy tells me, I do it,” Lindsey said. “I would call Jordy the ring-leader, but I’m also someone she can come to with an idea and tell her either ‘it’s stupid and we’re not doing this,’ or ‘this is great; let’s do this.’ If they need me to dig through the trash, I’ll dig through the trash. If I need to jump on the ceiling, I’ll jump on the ceiling. Whatever needs to be done to get the job done, we will do it.”

It doesn’t make us lose focus. It’s a game, and we’re supposed to have fun.

Jordyn Augustus

“I’m just Jordy’s side-kick,” Fulmer deadpanned. “We all work together and come up with some great ideas.”

“Sometimes they’re completely spontaneous, and I just use whatever is in the dugout,” Augustus said. “Other times I can be lying in bed, and I’ll think of something like ‘we need to a rally piñata.’ The next day, we get here early, took a bunch of cups, cut them up, taped them together, and filled them up with a bucket of bubble gum. The girls had a blast taking hacks.”

Whether it’s rally toilet paper or “cooking up” a big inning with aprons, chef’s hats and bats twirling in large buckets, it’s all in good fun. Coach Smith said she doesn’t want to know what they’re doing in advance, and she doesn’t mind being surprised; most of the time.

“I don’t want to know because if they ask me, I’m likely to say no.” Smith laughed. “So, they don’t tell me.

“They wait for the perfect moment, like when I’m going on national television (for a between inning interview), and they start wrapping me in toilet paper. I can’t really jump on them at that point.”

“We saw Coach going to do the interview, and we looked at each other and said ‘we’ve gotta go wrap them,'” Fulmer said.

Each has their favorite prank, but all are designed with the hope of sparking a big inning for the Gamecocks.

“I really liked it in Missouri when we were cooking up the big inning,” “Fulmer said. “This past weekend, we made a bus and a road, so it was like we were on a chase on the road to the Women’s College World Series. The front part of the bus was a cooler, and on front of it we put some cups (for headlights), and we put some buckets behind it to sit on. We had the top of the bucket for a steering wheel. The road was made out of tape.”

“I really liked baking the cookies. That was fun,” Lindsey said. “We had aprons. I also liked it when we were bowling. I went through the trash and got a bunch of cups out, and I put them in the 10-pin pyramid. We used a softball. We had our best bowler come in (Kennedy Clark), and she got a spare.”

“I think my favorite was last weekend when we made a fire truck,” Augustus said. “We got one of our roller boards that we use for stretching. We used a stretch chord, and I sat on the board like I was driving a fire truck. Stewie (Lauren Stewart) made a siren sound, Alexis pushed me around the dugout, and I was pretending the chord was a fire hose, spraying everyone.”

In case you were wondering, yes, the players really believe it helps. So, if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it. Right?

“I think it helps,” Lindsey said. “Just seeing the players faces when they come and see what we’ve done, and seeing them smile is enough for me. I think coach loves it.”

“It keeps everybody lose,” Fulmer said. “We play our best when we’re lose and having fun.”

“Not everybody can be an everyday player, but everybody can be an impact player,” Augustus said. “If we can find a way to keep things light in the dugout and keep the girls smiling and having fun, then it’s a good thing to relax them a little bit. It doesn’t make us lose focus. It’s a game, and we’re supposed to have fun. We don’t have to get too tight. If our team is more relaxed when they go into the batter’s box, that’s good.”

The Gamecocks play Arizona State beginning Friday night in the NCAA Super Regional in Temp, Ariz. You can bet there will be something cooking in the dugout, but nobody is willing to share what’s on deck.

“I’m not giving anything away,” Lindsey said, pressing her finger to her lips.

“I can’t give any hints, but I’ve got some ideas floating around,” Augustus said. “I’ll have to see what Arizona State has in our dugout that we can use to have some fun.”