Coupeville Sports

Coupeville softball star Sarah Wright has signed to play college ball for Sewanee: The University of the South in Tennessee. (Photo by JohnsPhotos.net)

Softball is carrying Sarah Wright across the country.

The Coupeville High School senior signed a letter of intent Wednesday to play for Sewanee: The University of the South, an NCAA D-III school in Tennessee.

While attending the liberal arts college, Wright plans to study politics, but will also spend a fair amount of time hanging around the diamond.

“I can’t imagine my life without softball,” she said in her Senior Night farewell. “And I am blessed enough to continue to play the sport I love.

“Go Tigers!”

The school, which is commonly referred to as simply Sewanee, offers 24 varsity sports.

The softball squad, coached by Merrit Yackey, went 3-27 this spring and graduates five of 11 players, leaving plenty of opportunity for Wright to make an immediate impact.

During her time at CHS, she’s been a four-year starter at catcher, while also pulling some side duty at third base and in the pitcher’s circle.

One of the most-ferocious sluggers ever to pull on a Wolf uniform, she brings smarts, grit, a surprising amount of speed, and eye-popping power to the diamond.

Wright is hitting .621 this season, with 41 hits, including 12 doubles, two triples, and four home-runs, while scoring 32 times and picking up 30 RBI.

During a four-year run she’s shared with fellow seniors Veronica Crownover and Nicole Laxton, the trio has won back-to-back league titles as juniors and seniors, while never losing a game to arch-rival South Whidbey.

Wright also played basketball for three seasons, volleyball for two, and soccer for two, and was named Homecoming Queen her senior season.

Sewanee softball, which plays in the Southern Athletic Association, currently has players from Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, Texas, and Pennsylvania on its roster.

A deep dive into Wikipedia reveals the campus (referred to as “The Domain” or “The Mountain”), sits on 13,000 acres atop the Cumberland Plateau, overlooking the Tennessee Valley.

The school was established in 1857, is affiliated with the Episcopal Church and has a long history of athletic and academic achievement.

The Sewanee Review, founded in 1892, is the oldest continuously-published literary magazine in the country, while 26 Rhodes Scholars have been launched from the campus.

Playwright and Pulitzer Prize winner Tennessee Williams, author of landmark plays such as The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, left his literary rights to the school.

There’s now a performance venue and teaching facility on campus named in his honor, and the school offers Tennessee Williams teaching fellowships.

The school can also lay claim to one of the great early-day athletic success stories.

The 1899 Sewanee Tigers football team went 12-0, with 11 shutouts, outscoring their foes 322-10.

Five of those wins came during a six-day, 2,500-mile road trip by train.

In a 2012 vote held by the College Football Hall of Fame, the 1899 Sewanee team nipped the 1961 Alabama squad and was named “the greatest collegiate football team of all time.”