It may be 24 games into the season, but the Massachusetts softball team still has work to do.
After holding George Washington to no hits in a doubleheader Sunday and scoring 28 total runs in the two games, UMass coach Elaine Sortino said there wasn’t a part of the team’s game they couldn’t improve on prior to its doubleheader today.
Part of the reason why Sortino feels the Minutewomen (17-7, 2-0 Atlantic 10) have areas to improve on comes with the fact that not until recently has UMass been able to practice outdoors.
“We finally for the first time got to practice on the field on Thursday,” Sortino said. “We finally got to do some base running and it showed up in our games [on Sunday].”
Despite playing games for nearly two months and practicing for even longer, UMass has spent the beginning of the season practicing indoors at Boyden Gym. While many drills can be performed indoors, there are still those that are either limited or cannot be done until a team is outdoors.
“We can run around the infield but you can’t lead hits, you can’t stretch a single into a double,” Sortino said.
With the Minutewomen finally getting to practice those drills at the end of last week, Sortino noticed a difference in the team’s play.
“You can’t do that until you get out onto the field and it showed up very, very well in our game [on Sunday].”
With space being limited indoors, it has also limited the practice of the outfield as well as the base running. Players are not able to get the full feel of chasing down a ball hit to the gap or having to keep an eye on a hit ball while measuring up how far they are from the outfield fence.
“These are all the things that now we can get out there and do,” Sortino said. “Our outfield has so much to do in terms of going back and playing balls to the gap and balls in between the infield.”
A-10 dominance
While today’s opponent Dartmouth is a non-conference foe, Sunday’s wins over George Washington opened up UMass’ conference schedule much the way the past few years have gone.
The Minutewomen have found little competition in most of the A-10 games the last couple of years, losing just 10 games in the conference since 2001. Prior to last season, where UMass lost twice in conference play, they had gone undefeated in the two previous years in the conference.
The success in the regular season has carried over as UMass has won 21 A-10 championships and 14 of the last 15.
The Minutewomen return to conference play after their doubleheader with Dartmouth, with doubleheaders against La Salle (April 1) and Fordham (April 3). The majority of UMass’ remaining games are against conference opponents, but the Minutewomen do have games against other non-conference foes such as Boston College, Boston University, Connecticut and Quinnipiac.
Jeffrey R. Larnard can be reached at [email protected].
