The University of Wisconsin softball team will look for its first win at the Blue and Gold Felsberg Memorial in Miami, Fla. this weekend.
The Badgers will play two double-headers facing Long Island (3-2) and Florida Gulf Coast (2-2) Saturday, and Bethune Cookman (1-3) and host Florida International (3-1) Sunday.
This weekend’s tournament could be less challenging than its first tournament, the ASU Kajikawa Classic, where the team went 0-6. Four of the teams UW faced were in the NCAA Softball World Series last year, but the Badgers did hold their own against two of those teams, losing only 3-1 to both California and Cal State Fullerton.
Wisconsin enjoys facing teams of this caliber, even though it may lead to more losses, according to junior outfielder Jen Krueger.
“It’s always good to go out and play the best [teams], you don’t want to always play the worst and win all the time,” Krueger said. “I’d rather play the best and have a good game than play the worst and kill them. [We] want to rebound from what happened [last weekend], take it as a learning experience and get out there this weekend.”
Despite going 0-5 as a starter this season, No. 1 pitcher Letty Olivarez has only a slim 3.20 ERA against that tough competition. As one of the team leaders, Olivarez trusts her instincts, calling off pitches from both her coach and catcher.
“I’ve been trying to keep a mentality of, in a way, selfishness, as to what I want to get ahead on the batter, but overall know that I’m helping my team out and that I can be ahead of this batter and beat this batter so it’s more a competition with me and the single batter opposed to in the past where it was me and the whole team,” Olivarez said. “So I’ve been trying to focus on smaller goals and win each pitch and win each batter so I think that’s helped me a lot.”
Krueger, the Badgers’ offensive leader last season, has started the season in a 2-16 slump, which she hopes to break out of this weekend, without an RBI or a single extra base hit.
“I just need to go up there and be confident; I know I can do it,” Krueger said. “It’s just a matter of seeing the ball and hitting the ball and putting it in play to put [the slump] behind me.”
As a northern Midwest university, the softball team has to travel far distances to different tournaments for the first few months of the season, which can be difficult on the players. In addition, they have to practice indoors and on artificial turf when back home. This presents consistency problems for the team, especially coming off of a long offseason. Krueger and Olivarez say that is just something that they to get used to. Even though they deny this as being a disadvantage, the offense has been stuttering at best and stagnant at worst, with only five RBI’s and 31 total bases in six games.
“I think now that we’re just getting our lineup set up and actually being able to play during a game and actually get the repetitions outside and against other opponents,” Olivarez said. “I feel like this past weekend, we could have loaded the bases and stuff like that, it’s just when we needed it we didn’t come through, so hopefully we’ll execute this coming weekend.”
Execution during practice and an ability to learn from their past mistakes were key factors Olivarez said the Badgers will need heading into the weekend.
“We’ve just been trying to gather ourselves back together and we’re just going to put these practices to where we can play our best,” Olivarez said. “We want to put the past behind us, but we want to be better from what we were and hopefully learn from our mistakes and play more as a team.”
