Pitt State softball attempts to turn over new leaf in 2023 season

Coaches and players say the team will try to succeed in the areas where last year’s stumbled.

By Alex Perry

Key takeaways

• PSU softball wants to be better from last year.
• The team’s pitching staff is looking to improve.
• The team’s hitters are looking to get stronger from last season as well.

After overhauling their pitching staff from last season, Pittsburg State University’s softball coaches are expecting a better overall record from last year. 

Despite the season ending on a strong note in the 2022 season, going 3-1 in the last four games, the previous 18 games were not so great for the team, generating only a single win. The Gorillas struggled late last year, but according to assistant head coach Brad Fuller, there is more to what happened than what the box score showed.

“Any time you play on the road in the MIAA it’s tough,” Fuller said. “I don’t know what the stat was, but I would bet we probably had leads in half of those games. We are looking to close those games out.” 

One step the coaches took to improve in late-game situations was getting new pitchers. Funner also noted that the conference will be unfamiliar with how these pitchers throw compared to last year’s team, which was extremely familiar within the MIAA conference. 

This season’s pitching will be led by Hannah Harrison and Lilli Weir, who started slowly as they played top-flight teams in NCAA Division 2 Softball. In this season’s early losses, one bad inning got away from them, but aside from those, they had solid starts to the season.

Head coach Jenny Fuller said to improve the team’s road record from last year, the team scheduled difficult tournaments to get the team ready before getting to the conference season.

“The 1-11 doesn’t sit well with us as coaches,” she said, “and we kind of thought that we didn’t prepare our team well enough through hard non-conference competition.”

The development from sophomore year to junior year for Harrison, as well as getting Weir from Division 1 Western Illinois, were key to fixing their pitching staff, which allowed an alarming amount of earned runs last season. Another thing that helped with early season cohesiveness was returning seven out of the nine players from last year offense, which was the strength of that team. 

Taylor Lambert was the best player on that offense as a junior, hitting at a .461 batting average while smashing six home runs and collecting 26 steals on the bases. Despite her individual success, the overall team results weren’t there, so she said that they’re going to move on from last year’s results and play their style of softball regardless if they are in home or away games.

 “Last year we started off at mutual sites really good,” Lambert said. “I don’t think home or away will matter this year. I think we will go in with the same mindset as if we were playing home or away. The past is the past, and we are all ready for a fresh start.”

Changes in the pitching staff brought some shifts to the dynamics of the team. This season is also the second year for this coaching staff, and Jenny Fuller said that the added experience will be a big help.

“This is year two for me and coach Brad, so they [the players] have a better understanding of what we expect as coaches and what we want the culture to look like through the work ethic and our team camaraderie,” Fuller said.

Brad Fuller said that year one required that both players and coaches figure each other out. However, in year two the expectations are better understood by both parties so they can focus now on meeting those goals for each other. 

Lambert also mentioned that the team had “found a couple missing pieces to the puzzle this year. We added some pitching and some good freshman who will be able to contribute this season.”

The Gorillas first regular season games were played in Conroe, Texas where they went 1-3 against a tough set of teams.

Since then they have gone 16-6 including a series win against their fellow MIAA conference members, the Lincoln Blue Tigers. 

The Gorillas will play Saturday, March 25 in a double header against the Rogers State Hillcats, and on Sunday, March 26, they will play the Northeastern State Riverhawks in another doubleheader. Both are going to be played at home in the Pittsburg State Softball Complex.