Defending champion USC Upstate has been voted the favorite in the Big South Conference’s annual preseason softball poll by the league’s head coaches, the conference office has announced.
In addition, the coaches voted Longwood infielder Sophia Knock (Liberty, Ind.) the league’s Preseason Player of the Year, and USC Upstate hurler Sierra Maness (Woodruff, S.C.) as the Preseason Pitcher of the Year.
Upstate was a near unanimous selection, as the Spartans received six of the seven first-place votes and 48 of the maximum 49 points to repeat in 2025. Longwood was second in the balloting with 37 points and collected the remaining first-place vote.
Winthrop, last year’s Conference Tournament runner-up, finished third in the poll with 30 points. Charleston Southern and Gardner-Webb tied for the fourth position with 25 points each, while Radford was sixth with 19 points. Presbyterian College garnered the seventh and final spot in the preseason poll with 12 points.
Knock is the first Lancer since 2019 to be voted Big South Preseason Player of the Year and fourth time overall. She earned All-Big South First-Team honors a season ago after leading the conference in home runs (10) and ranking second in total bases (80) and fourth in runs batted in (31).
Knock started all 52 games in 2024 at first base, hitting .326 (46-for-141) while slugging .576 and recording a .437 on-base percentage. She was one of 21 players in Division I last season to hit three homers in a contest when she went 4-for-4 with three homers and six RBI against Northern Iowa on Feb. 23.
Knock also hit home runs in the next two games against Brown and Stetson on March 2, both victories. She led the Lancers with eight multiple-RBI games and tied for second on the squad with 11 multi-hit efforts. In 18 Big South contests in 2024, Knock batted .413 with two home runs, 12 RBI, a .587 slugging clip and .541 on-base average. Knock received 14 points and three first-place votes in the balloting, just ahead of USC Upstate’s Alanna Deal (12 points, two first-place votes) and Charleston Southern’s Maddie Lee (10 points, one first-place vote).
In her first season with the Spartans in 2024, Maness was voted Second-Team All-Conference as well as to the All-Freshman Team. She was a three-time Big South Pitcher of the Week in addition to a Freshman of the Week honoree during the year and concluded her first collegiate campaign with a 13-11 record, 2.44 ERA, 19 complete games, four shutouts, 124 strikeouts and 163.1 innings pitched.
Maness appeared in 30 games and made 25 starts and fanned a season-high 11 batters against Loyola in her collegiate debut on Feb. 9. In Big South action, Maness finished 6-2 in the circle with 34 strikeouts in 54.0 innings. She received three first-place votes and 15 points in the voting, ahead of Longwood’s Maggie Chapin and Winthrop’s Megan Powell, who tied with 10 points and two first-place votes each.
The 2025 softball season begins Friday, Feb. 7, while the first conference weekend is scheduled for March 14-16. The 2025 Big South Softball Championship is slated for May 7-10, and the five-team double-elimination postseason tournament will be hosted by Presbyterian College in Clinton, S.C. The champion receives the Big South’s automatic bid to the NCAA Championship.
PRESEASON ALL-CONFERENCE TEAM
OF – Denver Lauer, Sr., USC Upstate
OF – Weslin Jones, Sr., Charleston Southern
OF – Taliyah Thomas, Jr., USC Upstate
1B – Sophia Knock, Jr., Longwood
2B – Maddie Lee, Jr., Charleston Southern
3B – Araceli Pesqueira, Gr., Gardner-Webb
SS – Alanna Deal, Sr., USC Upstate
C – Gracie Prince, Sr., Charleston Southern
DP – Carsten Sandvig, Soph., Charleston Southern
UTL – Kasey Wolfe, Soph., Presbyterian
P – Sierra Maness, Soph., USC Upstate
P – Megan Powell, Sr., Winthrop
P – Maggie Chapin, Jr, Longwood
P – Cierra Gawryluk, Soph., Longwood (tie)
P – Morgan Cooper, Soph., Radford (tie)
Big South Conference