The Lady Lions softball team visited Abilene Christian to play a three match series this past week. They lost all three games 3-2, 7-0, 12-5 which reduced their overall record to 9-14 this season.
“Well, we had a tough road trip at Abilene and we lost two close games out of the three game series,” said softball Head Coach Rick Fremin.
This was the team’s first conference series of the year. Junior outfielder Kinsey Nichols thought the Lady Lions were better prepared. However, the results did not follow as she hoped.
“Well, I think we kinda stepped into the conference with an idea that we would do better than we did,” said Nichols. “It was kind of a fresh start for our team and our program to build on last year’s team. We just expected more.”
The softball team went through a difficult run of fixtures this past month. Fremin believes these games would make the team stronger going into the second half of the season.
“There has been a lot of tough games throughout the month span,” said Fremin. “And we’re hoping that we can learn from our experiences so that it helps us towards the end of our schedule. I think that they’re learning to play the game at a higher level and know what is expected of them will hopefully get them ready for conference.”
Nichols is currently the team’s leader in terms of hits and runs batted in. She states that the team’s performance is more meaningful to her than the individual accomplishments.
“Personally, I could do more,” said Nichols. “But on the other hand, my teammates, they’re just as important as just one individual. I don’t see it as an individual performance but as a team and I think that everyone has a role and everyone does their part. So, it’s hard to point out just a single performance.”
One of the areas that Nichols believes the team can work on is being able to take time when the team is having a bad run during games and regroup.
“I think that once errors start to fall in, we just need to regroup and kind of remember why we’re here, what we’re doing versus just letting it continue,” said Nichols. “Like I said, we came into the conference thinking we got it but the game kind of showed some grey area that we needed to work on.”
Fremin looks to change some of his plans for the upcoming games and wants to see a change in results.
“We’ll probably rotate our pitching staff some,” said Fremin. “We’ve also moved around our batting line up a little bit. Just trying to find out what works best for us. I look forward to the second half of the season.”
From here on, Nichols believes that it is all about taking steps into the right direction progressively.
“You never know,” said Nichols “You don’t have control over the game, and I think you just take it game by game. You have to have a little short term memory. A win is just for that one game. You can’t let that affect the next game or the next week’s game.”
The Lady Lions roadtrip continues as they play University of Mississippi on Mar. 15 at 6 p.m.
