2012 California Golden Bears softball team
The 2012 California Golden Bears softball team is the representative of the University of California in the 2012 NCAA Division I softball season. The team plays their home games in Levine-Fricke Field and they entered the 2012 season after making the Women's College World Series with a 45–13 record in 2011 and making the postseason for 27 straight years.
Regular season
The 2012 season began for the Golden Bears with extremely high expectations with head coach Diane Ninemire going as far as comparing her 2012 squad to the Bears' 2002 national championship team. California started the season as #3 in the NFCA poll and spent most of the first half of the season as #1 in the ESPN poll and #2 in the NFCA poll.Heading into conference play, the Golden Bears had compiled a record of 26–1 with their only loss coming at the hands of then #18 Hawai'i in extra innings in Honolulu after previously beating #6 Texas in a hard fought game. To start off the conference slate, #2 California traveled across the bay to face #9 Stanford in a 3-game series in Palo Alto, and the Bears promptly swept the Cardinal to earn the #1 spot in both polls for the first time during the 2012 campaign. After the three game sweep of Stanford, the #1 Bears did not slow down, sweeping #3 Washington in Berkeley and unranked Utah in Salt Lake City. After the Washington series, the Bears were the unanimous #1 team in the country according to the NFCA and ESPN polls and at this same time, California came in as #1 in the NCAA's RPI rankings.
The Bears would go on to face #13 Arizona and despite losing their first conference game to the Wildcats, they still won the series 2–1 and retained the #1 ranking in both the NFCA and ESPN polls. The following weekend, the Bears travelled to Eugene to take on the #18 Oregon, and again took two of three games and retained the #1 spot in both polls for a fifth consecutive week. On April 24, 2012, California was in first place in the Pac-12 Conference with Arizona State only one game behind the top ranked Bears. In the second-to-last conference series of the regular season, both the Sun Devils and Bears swept their opponents setting up a showdown in Berkeley for the conference championship.
Going into the final weekend series of the regular season, the Golden Bears sported a 19–2 record in conference play and needed to take 2 of 3 from second place Arizona State. The Bears won the first game of the series thanks to walk off two-run home run by senior Valerie Arioto and won the second game of the series by a final score of 5-0 therefore winning the inaugural Pac-12 championship. The 2012 conference championship was the Bears' first sole conference championship since 1987, which just happened to be the first Pac-10 conference championship that was awarded.
Because California won their conference, they received an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament, and were later awarded the #1 overall seed in the tournament. With the upgrades at Levine-Fricke Field, the Bears hosted NCAA tournament games in Berkeley for the first time since 1993.
Attendance statistics
In 2012, California broke all attendance records for the softball program partially because on April 11, 2012, the University of California athletic department announced that they had more than doubled the capacity of Levine-Fricke Field by adding 704 bleacher seats in the outfield. On April 29, 2012, the California softball program broke the previous attendance record of 969 in a game against the UCLA Bruins with an announced crowd of 1,069, California then, however, broke the record again later on in the season with a crowd of 1,135 for the final game of the regular season. Overall, the Bears drew a crowd over 1,000 three times during the season for the first time in the program's history.Capacity: 500, 1,204
Average attendance: 529
Total attendance: 7,939