Softball Looks To Grow In Second Season

by Rick Kocher 


The Oberlin softball team will begin their season on Monday at Case Western Reserve at 3 p.m..

(photo by Lee Dolan)

The softball ladies were in good spirits during Thursday’s practice and are in high spirits about their second season. Regarding Monday’s game returning starter and ace pitcher junior Dawn Sweeney said “We are going to have fun, make few errors and hit the ball.” 

According to Head Coach Jane Wildman, “The season started back on Feb. 5 in Jones field house. We only had eight or nine players and our main concern at that time was being able to field a team.” Since that time, the team has been able to add some players. Wildman said, “We have 14 players now, including four returners from last season. The other 11 are either first-years or first-time players.” 

In only their second season of play, the women’s softball team is building from the ground up, with 11 first time players on 14-woman roster. Although focused on this season Coach Wildman talked about recruiting saying, “We put a lot of effort into recruiting this year.”

Wildman talked about the team’s focus, saying “We have had much improvement from our new players and we will continue to improve. The first six to eight games of the season we will focus on learning and improving.” 

The team will not go south for a spring break trip this season, as is typical for softball and baseball teams. During these spring break trips teams play five to 10 games in a week. Those games focus on experience, learning and also fun. However, because the team was not sure they would have enough people to field a team they had to cancel this year’s trip. Unfortunately, this spreads the teams first few games of learning out over a longer period of time. 

Hopefully the team will learn everything they need to succeed in a short amount of time, and start the season off with a win against the Spartans. The team’s fist two home games will be during spring break on March 29 and 30.