Grand Slam: Senior Rhea Flores, pitcher for the soft­ball team, keeps her eyes on the ball at a recent game. Flores pitched a four hit­ter against West Georgia lead­ing to a 4–3 vic­tory. Photo cour­tesy of Ferris State Athletics

Ferris has their work cut out for them as the team will play 14 games in eight days against some stiff com­pe­ti­tion, includ­ing California University (Pa.), which is ranked ninth in the National Fastpitch Coaches Association Division II Top 25 poll.

The Bulldogs began the sea­son 0–4, but won their last two games. Two of the first four con­tests were against top 5-ranked teams in the NFCA poll. Ferris head Coach Keri Becker feels the con­fi­dence the team gained from the pre­vi­ous tour­na­ment should def­i­nitely help the Bulldogs in the upcom­ing tournament.

“Our pitch­ers were able to gain some con­fi­dence and as a team we are now more com­fort­able out on the field,” said Becker.

Ferris will start the tour­na­ment off with a double-header on March 6 when they take the dia­mond against Gannon University (Pa.) and then again later in the day against Mary University (N.D.).

It will be impor­tant to get off to a good start to relieve some pres­sure from play­ing so many games in such a short amount of time. Freshman out­fielder Morgan Kramerich, who scored the win­ning run in the Bulldogs’ first win of the sea­son, felt that get­ting their first win removed a lot of pres­sure from the team.

“It felt like a weight was lifted from our shoul­ders and every­thing just went right in our next game,” said Kramerich.

Becker hopes that these early sea­son games will instill some tough­ness and the abil­ity to over­come adver­sity as the Bulldogs pre­pare for Great Lakes Intercollegiate Athletic Conference play.

Of the team’s 46 regular-season games this sea­son, 20 will be com­pleted by March 13. The GLIAC sea­son begins on March 31 with a home double-header against Saginaw Valley State.

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