The Pitt State baseball and softball teams are preparing for the upcoming seasons which both began on Friday, Jan. 31. The baseball team’s opening game is against Southwestern Oklahoma in Edmond, Oklahoma and the softball team’s first game of the season is against Texas A&M- Kingsville in Houston.
The baseball team began preparing for their upcoming season “back in September,” according to head baseball coach Bob Fornelli.
“Well, we have a lot of new faces on our team and our expectation is to go play as hard as we can each and every day and see what happens,” Fornelli said. “But we like the start of this team, but you never know until the season starts and things start happening. So, we’re pretty optimistic.”
The softball team began prepping for the 2020 season just recently, according to head softball coach Ashley Balazs.
“We started (practicing) last Tuesday (Tuesday, Jan. 14),” Balazs said. “So, we just finished up our pre-class stuff. (The) girls are back in class today (Tuesday, Jan. 21) and it was a really successful week for us. We spent a lot of time together and… the coaching staff and the players are very excited about the week that we had. We feel like we’re in a good place and now it’s just about managing classes, personal lives, and making softball a priority.
Balazs wants the team to be a strong competitor throughout the season and fight hard.
“… On the field, we want to compete,” Balazs said. “We’re not gonna put wins and losses or anything like, you know how they say we have to win 40 games or 20 games or whatever the number may be, we just want to go out and compete and give our competitors a mouthful.”
Fornelli hopes to see the baseball team continue to grow together and continue to enjoy playing baseball.
“The biggest thing is just play together, play hard, have fun, and compete each and every day,” Fornelli said.
Most sports place a large amount of importance on win-loss records, but Balazs would be happy to see the team continue to get better and enhance their skills every day as they practice or play a game throughout the season.
“I want to see us get better day in and day out,” Balazs said. “I think that’s what softball is about. It’s about making adjustments. It’s not about being your best on game one of the season… We want to continue to get better (and) we want to continue to fight for one another…”