[media-credit name=’Megan McCormick / The Badger Herald’ align=’alignnone’ width=’648′][/media-credit]

As the 2012 fall semester began and the Badgers took their respective positions on athletic fields across campus, hype was everywhere, almost tactile in the air. The discussion of which team would have the best season – would it be the football squad or the women’s hockey team or the always-dominant cross country lineup – failed to feature one important team, Wisconsin softball.

The 6-0 fall exhibition season – which witnessed a Meghan McIntosh no-hitter and a Cassandra Darrah perfect game – flew by like a fastball. Soon enough as the spring season arrived, win after win started piling up and as the Big Ten season continues, the Badgers have stockpiled a 27-4 start to the season, easily their most successful start in program history.

But success isn’t entirely new to this Wisconsin team. The Badgers torched the history books last season with numerous offensive records and a 13-game winning streak en route to a school record 34 wins. What is new – somewhat – is the level of success they’ve had.

That 13-game winning streak that was the center of attention in 2012? It’s already been matched by an equally lengthy streak this season and was accentuated by an additional 11-game streak just weeks earlier.

“I don’t even realize how many games it is when we’re winning,” sophomore center fielder Maria Van Abel said. “You just kind of play each game, then go back to the hotel and you get up again and play the next game.

“It’s not where we’re nervous about losing the next game because we just try to take a one game at a time approach.”

Well, it seems to be working.

That approach is the 1-0 mindset that former football coach Bret Bielema coined during his seven years before leaving Wisconsin. With Bielema miles away, the softball team has adopted the approach as their own.

How do they deal with success? The Badgers just continue to win.

In just their third game of the season, Wisconsin topped then-No. 26 Notre Dame, a preseason favorite in the Big East. Then they beat that same team a day later. Then they rolled off six victories in the southeastern corner of the nation before adding another pair out west.

“Even when we’ve played these big name teams, it wasn’t like, ‘oh my God, it’s Notre Dame,'” freshman designated player Stefanni LaJeunesse said. “We played like we were at their caliber.”

A month later they surprised then-No. 24 North Carolina with a 4-2 victory. Although weather cancelled their game against No. 11 Louisville, the Badgers swept their three remaining games at the Easton Classic and their three games that followed, which just so happened to come against Big Ten foe Illinois.

Winning has become a common thing for this team. For Wisconsin head coach Yvette Healy, who has directed the program onto a championship course in her three years at the helm, winning is one of the only things right now but it’s far from the most important thing.

“The wins are great, and it’s exciting,” Healy said while sizing up her team’s success to this point. “You know as a program where you need to improve, so we need to be getting a little better all the time.”

Whether or not they were ready for it, an even further slice of success came Wisconsin’s way Tuesday afternoon as, for the first time this season, the Badgers were ranked – albeit 25th – in the national coaches poll. They had toiled weeks without receiving a single vote on any one of the 31 weekly ballots. Now that they’re ranked, don’t expect that sample to mean much to them.

While it’s nice to finally garner some national respect, Healy is taking it with an outward view of her program.

“It’s been a good thing because it’s the reality of when you’re trying to build a program. You don’t immediately get respect, you don’t immediately get recognition,” Healy said. “But you would rather be underrated than overrated … It shows us that we’ve got a long way to go.”

Where they’re going – they are hoping – is the top of the Big Ten standings. For Wisconsin, that would signify the true measure of their success, as it was a team goal to begin the season.

They’ve started their trek toward that goal and through two conference series, Wisconsin (5-1 Big Ten) trails frontrunner and perennial champion Michigan (6-0) by one game. With that 1-0 mentality, the Badgers certainly aren’t looking forward. In fact, they’ve been looking backward as a means of motivation amid their early-season successes.

“Last year, we think we could have ended better than we did,” Van Abel said, referring to their late-season collapse that saw the Badgers lose four of their final five conference matchups starting with a two-game sweep at the hand of Michigan.

“It’s good to know where you were and to know that you can easily slip back into losing series and losing close games,” Van Abel said. “I think that’s just more motivation for us to keep working hard … and that we don’t have that bitter taste that we had at the end of last season.”

One game at a time, they’ll be back in that position soon.