COLORADO SPRINGS – Experience can be vital to the success of any of softball program. But it’s only one small component of what can make a team find measurable success throughout the course of the year.
That was the case for the 2020 Widefield Gladiators and it’s a lesson that the 2021 team is hoping to replicate through the course of the season. It’s a season that didn’t start the ideal way as the Gladiators dropped their season opener to Pueblo South 19-0 on Tuesday.
But last year didn’t start all that well either. The team dropped its first four games of the year before finishing the season on an 8-4 run where they put together some solid wins.
One game does not a season make.
This year’s team is trying to draw on last year’s successes and hoping that the returning players can have a similar impact as they did a year ago.
“The girls that are coming back are definitely the leaders,” coach Jessica Rengnerus said. “They’re great hitters and great players and we’ll build off of them for sure.”
Among those coming back, the pitcher and catcher combination of sophomore Robyn Foster and junior Abigail Vsetecka are among the notables that helped the Gladiators finish the season strong. Vsetecka was second on the team in batting average (.467) and third on the team in runs scored (18).
Foster batted .391 with 12 RBI’s and got five innings on the mound, which had to do in terms of pitching experience. She’ll now be the primary player in the pitching circle this season. But they know that they’re far from the players that will contribute and are looking forward to taking this young squad and watching it develop over the coming months.
“We all work as a team,” Foster said. “We need to get better at working as a team as well. For the girls that are back, it’s going to be a good season.”
One thing that the Gladiators are certainly missing is the senior leadership that they had a year ago. But the four girls that graduated helped the team understand that seasons are marathons, not sprints.
The Gladiators responded with their four-game skid to open the year with a five-game winning streak. It was about building that team cohesiveness and it’s a trait that this year’s leaders have fully adopted.
“I just want to see some of these girls coming up for the first time to battle,” Vsetecka said. “We’re pretty close as a team, but I think it will be great to see us get closer as we’re playing and helping each other. I think there’s a lot to improve on in terms of the little things, communication and stuff like that.”
The communication has to start early in the process and that’s something that Rengnerus is looking for. The opening loss to Pueblo South was tough, but that pain can be eased down the road as long as the Gladiators are willing to learn from it and apply it to their development down the road.
“We were talking about that out in our little huddle,” she said. “We were naming some things and they all came up with stuff like getting better at reading the ball in the outfield, getting better at fielding hard hit grounders. They can get better at everything facing a team like (Pueblo South).”
And the beauty of a full 2021 fall schedule is that they have time to work on those weaknesses and apply them to their games moving forward.