The State softball team is gearing up for the long grind of the season ahead, but for right now, its focus will be on its home opener against the North Carolina Central University Eagles today at 4 p.m. at the Curtis & Jacqueline Dail Softball Stadium.
State is coming off of a 2-2 start to the season as it opened up the season with a tournament in Miami Fl. last weekend.
“We’re a little tired to, so were just kind of working on staying up the whole game, stuff like that. We’re just working those kinks out so tomorrow’s much better,” senior pitcher Lindsay Campana said.
Last season, the Pack finished right under .500, getting to a mark of 23-25. The sub .500 record was due in part to the Pack’s poor play in the ACC, in which the team finished 5-13 in conference play and was bounced by perennial conference rival North Carolina in the first round of the ACC Tournament.
Some of the players feel that their loss against UNC can provide plenty of motivation going into this season.
“Its the feeling after last year, we lost to UNC, and it’s the feeling we don’t want anymore. The players that were there, were like we don’t want to feel that feeling ever again,” Campana said. “We worked in the offseason, and in January in the preseason just to working to get better. It’s a feeling we don’t want and it’s very, very motivating. So it’s just something that we’re not okay with. Our coach is not okay with, you know just being under .500.”
In the offseason, the team spent its time working on getting back to playing consistently and conditioning so the team would be able to compete throughout the season.
“We were running a lot, we were lifting a lot to keep our endurance up. And then we did a lot of live pitching,” junior catcher Alyssa Albritten said.
After their match up against UMass, the team feels like it focus for improvement needs to be on the defensive end of the ball. Which will start with Campana on the mound. The senior had a 1.87 ERA, 13 wins and pitched a no-hitter against the Boston College Eagles and pitched two other shutouts all last year.
“That was a big game, and we struggled a little bit defensively in that game. So we’re just working on some defensively to get a little quicker,” Campana said.
With that said about their previous season and the beginning of this season, the team has still set high expectations for themselves going into the 2009-2010 season.
“We have high expectations for the season. We’re [going to] finish in the top three of the ACC. We’re [going to] finish in the top 3 in conference play,” Albritten said. “Then we also want to win the tournament, finish ranked top-25 in the nation at the end of the year and we [want to] go postseason, as far as we can.”
