FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
S-134-06-07
Thursday, May 10, 2007

Elizabethtown College’s Alex Lee & Kelli Thon Named to All-Commonwealth Conference First Team in Softball; Kathy Staib Named Conference Coach of the Year 

ELIZABETHTOWN, Pa. --- Two members of the Elizabethtown College softball team have been named to the All-Commonwealth Conference First Team for the 2007 season: junior pitcher Alex Lee (Emmaus, PA/Emmaus) and senior center fielder Kelli Thon (Victor, NY/Victor Central). Additionally, Elizabethtown head coach Kathy Staib has been named the Commonwealth Conference Coach of the Year for 2007.

Lee has earned a place on the all-conference teams for the first time in her career this season after pitching in all but one of Elizabethtown’s 33 games in 2007. In 32 appearances this year, she made 31 starts and had 31 complete games with five shutouts. In 206-2/3 innings of work, she held opposing batters to a .238 average, spreading 191 hits, 87 runs, 58 earned runs, 59 walks and 136 strikeouts over that span. She posted a 16-15 win-loss record and had a 1.96 earned run average. This season, Lee set Elizabethtown single season records for most complete games and most innings pitched, and her 32 appearances rank second all-time. Her five shutouts were the third-highest single-season total ever at Etown, and her 16 wins and 136 strikeouts rank fourth in each category.

In her three-year career at Elizabethtown, Lee has a 2.52 ERA in 445 innings pitched and a total of 24 wins and 346 strikeouts. She ranks fourth all-time at Etown in career appearances with 75, second in complete games with 61, fourth in shutouts with seven, third in innings pitched, second in saves with three, seventh in wins, and third in strikeouts.

Thon has closed out her career having earned all-conference recognition in all four seasons and a place on the first team in each of the last three. She was also a National Fastpitch Coaches’ Association All-East Region First Team honoree in 2006. This season, she batted .353 with 42 hits, 28 runs scored, five runs batted in and 14 stolen bases, and she led the team in batting average, at-bats (119), runs, hits and stolen bases.

In her career, Thon has compiled a .411 batting average with 174 hits, 77 runs scored, 27 runs batted in, a .435 on-base percentage and 50 stolen bases. She is Elizabethtown’s all-time career hit record holder, and she ranks third all-time at Etown in career batting average, fourth in runs scored, and second in career stolen bases. Her .519 batting average in 2005 was the program’s highest single-season average since the team’s inaugural season of 1979, which consisted of just eight games.

Staib was named the conference’s Coach of the Year for the first time this season after guiding the Blue Jays, which were picked to finish seventh out of eight teams in the conference pre-season coaches’ poll, to their first Commonwealth Conference playoff berth since 2003. The Blue Jays finished second in the conference during the regular season and earned the second seed in the playoffs. The team went 16-17 overall and 8-6 in the conference in 2007, an improvement of eight wins over last year and the Blue Jays’ highest win total since 2003.