USC Upstate's Liza Simmerson (Carson)

Staff report

CLEMSON, S.C. — University of South Carolina Upstate’s softball team is in the Clemson Regional that begins on Friday.

The Spartans will take on the 11th-ranked hosts at 4:30 p.m. The game is scheduled to be shown on the ACC Network.

USC Upstate (39-14) tied for third in the Big South Conference in the regular season, but the Spartans won the conference tournament.

USC Upstate won 7-4 in the tournament final against Winthrop (30-23), the other team that tied for third in the Big South regular season.

That tournament championship game included several match-ups between two Carson High graduates at the Division I level, as Lonna Addison is one of the main pitchers for Winthrop, while Liza Simmerson is having a nice finish to her senior year for USC Upstate. Simmerson won one of those match-ups with Addison with a third-inning double.

Addison, who was in her first year at Winthrop after transferring from Lees-McRae, finished a strong season with an 11-6 record, a 2.92 ERA and 91 strikeouts.

Simmerson had not gotten to play much during her first three seasons at USC Upstate, but she started getting regular at-bats in mid-April this year and has really helped the Spartans.

She’s usually stationed at second base. She’s batting .351 for the season (13-for-37) with three doubles and eight RBIs.

USC Upstate has another starter with Rowan connections.

Senior third baseman Alanna Deal is one of the standouts for the Spartans. She’s batting .338 with five homers and 31 RBIs.

Alanna played in high school at South Columbus in Whiteville, but her father Kevin Deal is a South Rowan graduate. People who watched South Rowan play baseball in the mid-1990s will remember Kevin as a slugging third baseman and cleanup hitter  who had a huge season in 1996 when the Raiders set a school record for wins that lasted for many years.