Season Update

If you haven’t already noticed…it has been a while since I have posted a softball blog.  Other tasks always seem to arise and blogging gets pushed aside.  This blog should give you a good idea of what our season has been like so far.  I will try to blog after every game from here on out to keep our readers updated!  We are now 4-8 overall and getting ready to open conference play (that is if the weather ever decides to cooperate with us).  We have had to postpone our games against Wartburg and Grinnell because of the cold and rainy (sometimes snowy) weather.  The Wartburg game will be played on Monday, April 9^th at 3:00 in Storm Lake and the Grinnell game will be played on Tuesday, April 17^th at 3:00 in Storm Lake.  We are scheduled to head to Pella tomorrow to play a double-header versus Central beginning at 3:00.  Hopefully the snow will hold off! 

Our first ten games of the season were in Kissimmee, FL at the Osceola County Softball complex.  It is a great facility with five high-quality fields.  Collegiate teams from all divisions and all areas of the country come to Kissimmee every year to play in the Rebel Games.  A lot of great softball is played here during the month of March!  The weather was nice for the most part and everyone returned home with a good tan.

We came back from Florida with a 3-7 record.  Despite the losing record, our team showed great potential during the week.  We started the week off by winning three out of our first four games.  We were hitting the ball well and playing fairly solid defense behind great pitching.  Unfortunately…our bats fell asleep for the rest of the trip.  This made it hard to win anymore games.  We left a lot of runners on base which is frustrating (but a good sign at the same time).  We just have to string our hits together and learn to perform with runners on base.  I am confident this will come with time and experience! 

We are a very young squad and we had a lot of new faces on the field.  We tried a lot of different line-ups during week and it took a while for everyone to get used to playing with each other.  It was also one of the first times our players were able to play outside.  Even though we are fortunate to have a great indoor practice facility, nothing compares to playing on the dirt and grass…especially when it is eighty degrees and sunny!

We didn’t spend the entire trip playing softball.  When we had free time the team was in the pool or shopping.  We also had one day off during the week to relax.  Some of the team went to Universal Studios and some went to Wet-N-Wild.  Everyone had a great time and got the chance to experience something new!  I have included some pictures from the spring trip in this blog…enjoy!

Once we returned from Florida we headed down to Des Moines to play Grand View College.  We lost the first game of the day 17-11 and came back to win the second game in eight innings 10-7.  Needless to say our bats finally woke up and we began scoring runs again.  The two teams combined for 45 runs and 50 hits…it was a slugfest!  Brandi Sykora had a team high four hits on the day.  Senior Lesley Salton had three hits, three runs, three RBI’s, and a home run.  She also had great games defensively for us at third base.  Adrienne Scott, a junior, belted out a three-run homer and drove in a total of five runs on the day.  Grand View has a lot of speed and put a lot of pressure on our defense the entire day.  It was a good experience for our ladies to play a team like Grand View.  After the first couple of innings our defense relaxed and we adjusted to their style of play.  These were two great games for us to have early in the season!  

Hopefully the bats will stay hot as we travel to Pella tomorrow.  They are one of our biggest rivals in the Iowa Conference.  We would like nothing more than to come home with two big wins!  Go Beavers!