The Georgia Perimeter College softball team is ending a half century of intercollegiate athletics at the college in great style.

The Jaguars traveled to St. George, Utah, Monday to represent GPC and their conference at this week’s National Junior College Athletic Association Championship Tournament.

Seeded 12th in the 16-team double-elimination tournament, they play No. 5 Blinn College, Texas, today at 6 p.m. EST.

Head coach Ken Deyton said he thinks the Jaguars are ready.

“We are very excited about this opportunity,” Deyton said. “The competition will be tough, but we’ve had a couple of weeks to prepare. I think we are playing our best softball of the season.”

GPC breezed through the Georgia Collegiate Athletic Association championship in April with an 18-4 rout of Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in the title game.

It’s the final hurrah for the Georgia Perimeter College sports program, which ends this spring because the college is merging with Georgia State University.

The Jaguars enter the NJCAA nationals with a 25-19 record. They also enter with the confidence that they previously have beaten their first-round opponent.

Blinn College (43-14) and GPC met on Feb. 7 at the Wallace State Invitational in Atmore, Ala., and the Jaguars prevailed 4-3.

Kendra Pfister (6-5) earned the win, pitching five innings and striking out five, while La’Brisha Washington tossed two innings of scoreless relief. At the plate Caitlin McBee was 3-for-3 with a run; Carolyn Edwards stroked two hits and scored twice; Rachel Poplawski also had two hits and scored a run.

Knocking in runs were Abby Lyall, Sam Leach, K.K. Parrish and Morgan Howard, who is the only sophomore on the freshman-laden team.

Washington (18-12) has led the Jaguars to an eight-game winning streak, earning the win in all eight games. She has struck out 138 batters, second in the GCAA, and posted a 2.38 earned run average that doesn't reflect her impressive dominance of hitters in the last eight games.

First baseman Edwards leads Georgia Perimeter with a .360 batting average and has 36 runs batted in, third in the conference.

Third baseman Chase Battle, who pounded out 10 hits in three games at the GCAA tournament, is hitting .351 and leads the team in home runs with six.

Swift-footed Parrish is tied for the GCAA lead in stolen bases with 20, and Poplawski ranks in third place with 15.

Blinn College, located in Brenham, Texas, won the NJCAA Region 14 tournament in Lufkin, Texas. Georgia’s GCAA is known as Region 17 in the NJCAA. 

Bucanneer hitters to watch are Meghann Wrinkle (.427) and Delliah Pacheco (.414), but Blinn is a hitting club—11 players carry batting averages over .300.

Mariah Gibson leads the Buccaneers in the circle with a 23-8 record and 179 strikeouts. Jaiden Rawls (20-6) absorbed the loss to the Jaguars in February.

Georgia Perimeter and Blinn have fared about the same against common opponents this season. Both teams lost to No. 2 seed Wallace State. Both lost to always-tough Southern Union Community College.

Both fell to No. 4 Chattanooga State, but GPC bounced back in the second game of a March doubleheader for a sweet 2-1 victory. San Jacinto defeated both, but Blinn won three other contests against its Texas rival.

The Jaguars defeated No. 3 seed Chipola College 5-4 in February. Washington won that game, and the Jaguars scored three runs off losing pitcher Madison Ragan, who leads the nation with a .64 earned run average.

Neither GPC nor Blinn has faced the No. 1 seed, Salt Lake Community College.

Deyton’s assistant coaches at nationals are Kathleen Vogler and Freddie Glass. Assistant coach Kacie Patterson had to miss the tournament because she traveled to Germany to play professional softball. Patterson played shortstop for GPC when the Jaguars played in the 2013 NJCAA tournament in St. George.

“We look forward to the competition, but regardless of the outcome, these players are already champions to me and my coaches,” Deyton said.