Southwestern College Collegian

Issue date: 3/12/08 Section: Sports

If you took a walk around the diamond at last week's practice, you would have found an anxious softball team. The team was begging for their opening game against Dakota Wesleyan this week. Unfortunately that opening game was washed out by rain. They followed that wash out with another the next day. Saturday finally offered playable conditions to start a weekend tournament at McPherson in the McPherson Tournament. The ladies played four games over the weekend, one on Saturday and three on Sunday, and lost all four of them. Saturday they lost to Avila 11-3. Sunday they lost to Graceland University 15-3, to Avila 3-2, and to Haskell Indian Nation 4-0. The softball team played Mid-America Nazarene in a doubleheader Tuesday. Scores were not available at press time. Despite the slow start, the women felt they showed improvement during the weekend. Talia Clark, freshman shortstop, said, "We didn't win any of them but it was quite apparent that we improved each game. Once we get all the elements of the game to work together all at once we will be a pretty hard team to beat." The team wasn't ready to blame the four games in the loss column this weekend on the earlier rain delays. Amanda Baughman, junior outfielder, said, "It did not have much effect on the team, we just continued to practice and play hard." The team was upset they didn't get to start a few days earlier. Clark said, "All of us were pretty bummed out. We were excited to play all week." Including yesterday, the team has three doubleheaders in five days. It will reduce the amount of practice time the team has. With a slow start on the field one might think the team could start to be unmotivated. However, the players are still as excited about the season as ever. Camaraderie is high. Clark said, "My teammates are great and fun to be around and we mesh together very well on the field." Baughman, who transferred to Southwestern this year, said, "Blending in with the team has been great. Everyone that has a part of SC softball is amazing. We all understand the definition of 'team' which helps us play very well together." Anthony Cook is a junior majoring in communication. You may e-mail him at anthony. cook@sckans.edu.

Page 1 of 1

Article Tools