Despite a tough start in April, the University of Indianapolis Softball Team has brought their ranking back to second in the GLVC Conference and ranked 16th nationally for Division II, with a five game winning streak. The Hounds have played eight series so far, consisting of two games in each series.
According to Head Softball Coach Melissa Frost, this is something that they should stray away from in order to complete their goals that was set earlier in the season.
“We’ll peak at the right time I hope,” Frost said. “I feel like we have a lot of growing to do and a lot of learning to do. I felt like we had a really good March, now we gotta get over this April hump.”
With losses against four GLVC conference opponents against Maryville University, University of Missouri St. Louis, Quincy University and Drury University, the team is 10-4 in conference play.
According to Frost, she is not happy with the losses and the mistakes that the team has made.
“[I am] disappointed in some of the losses we’ve had, just simply because we’ve beat ourselves,” Frost said. “We talk about the standard for this program and there are days where we don’t stick to the game plan and don’t live up to the standard of this program and its disappointing. But it’s a learning process and a growing process. We’re a young team so we have a lot of room to improve.”
Frost said that a large portion of their issues were due to not following the strategy. She said that as long as they follow their plan going into this next stretch of games, they can hopefully come out on top.
Sophomore ace pitcher Halie Waters said that the resiliency and support of the team is one of its strengths.
“I think it’s just our ability to bounce back and come together, I think we have a very good support system,” Waters said. “…We have a lot of fight in us this year.”
However, in the last 10 games, the Hounds are 8-2 bringing back their GLVC ranking from 4th to 2nd behind Southern Indiana University. According to Waters, these struggles are something the team is not used to having.
“The way we started was not a characteristic of our team,” Waters said. “We learned a lot from those early games and what we needed to work on to improve. I feel we have been on an upward swing, especially in the past couple of weeks.”
The fight from this year can be stemmed from the pitching staff who have all returned from last year.
Frost said that the pitching staff will have a large role to play in their games in April.
Among the pitching unit is Waters, who this season threw her first career no-hitter against Lewis University. Waters said they need to put in the effort to be successful for the rest of the season.
“…There are so many factors to softball, and it is a game of failure,” Waters said.“Each day we control what we can control and give 100 percent effort, if we do those things we can put ourselves in the best position to win. If we keep playing as a unit, picking each other up, and working hard we will be in a good position come conference time and whatever comes after that.”
The team has six GLVC series left in the season, and Frost said they hope to get back to the game plan in order to finish strong before the GLVC and NCAA tournaments.
According to Waters, the strategy is to continuously get better as the season goes on.
“We need to just keep playing together and improving every day,” Waters said. “We talk about it in practice, just one percent better every day, remember that and focus on that. Get tougher, get better every single day and towards the end of season pull it all together.”
