The Missouri softball team spent close to three hours sitting in right field at Tuesday’s practice, simply having a conversation about who the team is.
The leading seniors on the team, Taylor Gadbois, Sami Fagan and Emily Crane, knew something wasn’t working right when the team didn’t perform well during last weekend’s matchup. They approached coach Ehren Earleywine, who agreed with them, and they decided to talk with the whole team.
“I usually go to Sami and Taylor and say ‘what are you guys thinking, is there anything that you guys want to say that you’re not saying, and if so maybe we should meet up,’ and basically we just talk it out,” Crane said. “More times than not, just meeting with the team and getting everyone’s input helps us best, or just hanging out off the field, having something outside of softball that we all can just relax and enjoy each other really helps as well.”
Earleywine had only one request for Wednesday’s home doubleheader against Wichita State: “play for the person beside you.”
And the team did just that.
The Tigers swept the doubleheader, winning the first game 11–0 and the second game 9–2 with the offense and defense playing consistently and cohesively — a complete turnaround from last weekend when Missouri hosted Georgia at home and lost all three games in the series.
“The team just woke up, you could feel the unity from the time you got here to the time you left,” Earleywine said. “When we play for the person beside us, we’re really hard to beat. Last week was a rough week for us internally, (and) you could see it over the weekend. We were just divided. But we figured all that stuff out and it seemed to work.”
Crane, who posted two home runs in the doubleheader, said being a team off the field helps the team dynamic in the dugout, especially during games like yesterday’s. She said that being back on the same page as a team helped everyone perform well.
Earleywine revamped Tuesday’s practice. Instead of having their normal routine, he let the team talk out their differences and had a short batting practice after. The batting practice seemed to help just as much as the conversation did, with Missouri hitting an impressive .440 against Wichita State’s pitching.
That will help with the confidence going into this weekend, when the team heads to Kentucky for a Southeastern Conference matchup. Kentucky boasts an impressive pitching staff and just swept their series against Louisiana State, so having a confident offense going into the series will be an immense help for Missouri.
“We struggled a little bit against Georgia, but we are always confident in our offense,” junior catcher Kirsten Mack said. “We know that we can come through in big situations and batters one through nine have the ability to come through. This is just going to segway into the weekend, I think everyone had a couple of hits today, so that’s always a good thing because if you can go into a game feeling good you’re going to perform well.”
Mack called yesterday’s performance unselfish, and stressed that everyone needs to cheer for each other if they want to keep winning like they did last night.
Going into the next couple of series confident and united will be key for Missouri to move up in the SEC rankings before heading to the conference tournament in May and, ideally, the national tournament and World Series in June.
“I just asked that we play together (yesterday),” Earleywine said. “I think the message from here on out is, (they) tell me (they) want to go to the World Series. The path to do that is playing together, like (they) did. So. that’s what we’ve got to do going forward into the next couple of series.”
_Edited by Alec Lewis | alewis@themaneater.com_