D1Softball announced today that the UMBC Softball program was one of the Top 50 in the Nation

UMBC, the three-time defending America East Champion, placed 50th on the list , behind SDSU, Ohio State, Saint Francis and Nebraska.

D1Softball described the selection process as the following:

For the purpose of this exercise, we don't care what happened in the 1970s or 80s – or even the 90s — that's ancient history to a potential recruit in 2023. Tradition is nice, but it's more important to establish a tradition of consistent winning in the last decade, and especially in the last five years. Our ultimate goal here is to identify the programs in the best shape right now, with an eye toward the next five to 10 years.

So we began by awarding programs points for making regionals and having postseason success in the last five years, and a fewer amount of points for success between six and 10 years ago. That gave us a starting point; then national writers Tara Henry and Brady Vernon made adjustments based on evaluations of coaching staff quality and stability, facilities, scholarship/financial aid situation, conference dynamics, momentum and recruiting and player development proficiency. 

We tried to take many factors into consideration and debated our rankings internally at length. Reasonable minds will disagree on the rankings.

The full article can be found here.