Embracing The Fun

Taylor Liguori recalls a tough start to Maryland Softball’s 2022 season reached a low-point in a one-run loss to Central Michigan in the first game of the Chanticleer Showdown, dropping the Terps to 4-6 on the young season. As the players dejectedly went back to the team hotel, Liguori’s parents went to a local Ron Jon’s store and came back with a simple gift to cheer their daughter up: a stuffed turtle.

Liguori instantly showed it to her roommate and close friend, Trinity Schlotterbeck, who chose to name the turtle Tank—because the team hits tanks, of course. The pair then decided to bring the stuffed animal into the dugout and show him off to the whole team. 

“At first, it was supposed to be if you hit a home run you got to hold Tank, but everyone loved Tank so much that we would just pass him around all the time during the game,” Liguori said. “It was just this stupid, but fun thing that everyone enjoyed.”

“Everyone had fun with it right away,” Schlotterbeck added. “It was kind of this joke but it was also something cool that brought more energy to the dugout.”

Soon afterwards, the roommates decided Tank needed a friend and purchased a stuffed chameleon off Amazon. This time, they named it Liddy, “because we like to keep our dugout lit,” Liguori said. 

The two stuffed animals became staples in the Maryland dugout, both at home and on the road. 

“We just had them everywhere,” Schlotterbeck said. “We’re a team that loves to have fun and this was another thing that we could do to make the season more fun.” 

That fun ultimately paid off in the form of a 2022 season that ended up being one of the best in program history with 29 total wins, the most since 2013. And it didn’t stop there. 

The success of the 2022 campaign led into a 2023 season that has been even better. The Terps are off to a blistering 26-10 start, highlighted by a pair of top-25 wins, for what is officially the best start in program history.

Of course, the turnaround is hardly a result of a couple of stuffed animals and the girls would be the first to say that. But what Tank and Liddy have done, as silly as the concept of them might be, is help the team fully embrace their lighthearted and fun sides, two qualities that the program veterans say is essential to the success of the team.

“Based on our record and how we’ve been playing, you can tell that the games we win are when we’re out there on the field having fun together,” Liguori said. “And it’s vice versa too, when we’re having fun is when we’re winning.

I think you take something as dumb as this and you see what makes our team special. We just have fun with each other and are really close. It helps us build strong connections off the field and then as soon as we get on the field, you can’t really pull anyone away from each other. Everyone thinks of everyone else’s success as your own success.”

The two stuffed animals have provided no shortage of laughs for the team. From a Tank and Liddy instagram account, to a mascot battle with Boston College’s dugout last season, the amusement never stops for Maryland softball. 

The girls wouldn’t have it any other way.

“This is a team that needs to have fun,” Schlotterbeck said. “We’re a team full of different characters, different energies and different personalities. We’re at our best when we’re loose, relaxed and having fun with each other.” 

Liguori and Schlotterbeck are regarded as the two “parents” of the stuffed animals, but even with both of them being seniors and set to graduate, there are no plans for the stuffed animal tradition to leave with them.

“We want it to stay with Maryland softball,” Schlotterbeck said. “They’ve kinda become part of the team and part of what we do now. It’s cool because we have incoming commits who follow the Instagram account and are invested too so we know they’ll be excited to keep the energy when they get here.”

As the two seniors begin to wind down their time in a Maryland softball uniform, the future of Tank and Liddy aren’t the only thing they’re reflecting on. Both girls can’t help but think about how far they’ve come since they committed to Maryland as hometown kids. 

“I committed my freshman year of high school and my goal since the minute I signed was to come in here and help turn this program around and make it a winning program,” said Schlotterbeck, who hails from Williamsport. “To be here and actually doing that is an unreal feeling. The past four years we’ve been working on bringing everyone together and helping everyone buy into that winning attitude, so to see it come to the surface has been awesome.”

“It’s been really cool to be a part of, especially with us both being seniors,” Liguori, a Columbia, MD native, added about the team’s hot start. “When I committed here, the plan was to grow the program. But to see where we are now, and see it happening maybe even more than I imagined, it’s just really special. I definitely attribute it to the love we all have for each other. You can obviously see it off the field, but I think it comes through on the field just as much.”

The Terps are still hungry for more as they head into the thick of conference play, but one thing is for sure—Tank and Liddy will continue to be staples in the dugout. 

“I’m a huge superstitious person,” Liguori said. “So if we’re winning and they’re out there, they’re gonna stay out.”

And the softball Terps are certainly winning—at a rate never done before at that.