Most first-year students have an entire year to adjust to life away from their families and the rigors of college-level classes; the spring semester brings new classes, but not a dramatic change from the fall semester. For Virginia freshman softball players, however, the spring semester is marked by weekends devoted to travel and tournaments, midweek doubleheaders and afternoons blocked off for practice.
Though the softball team does not play a single game until mid-February , once the season starts, the Cavaliers play as many as 56 games before the end of April.
"During the fall you're focused on getting grounded here and learning the ways of the college," freshman Lauren McCaskey said. "Then in the spring your total concentration is on softball. All you're focusing on is softball, softball, softball."
Fellow freshman Alison Pittman agreed that the transition is dramatic.
"Not playing in actual game situations gives you time to academically make the adjustment," Pittman said. "But then going from the fall to the spring kind of wakes you up to what it is going to be like when you are in-season. So it's an adjustment there as well -- time management [is] even more [important] than in the fall."
The change in schedule is significant, but despite the intensity, the athletes still keep up with the friends they made off the field.
"You still get to see them if you live in a hall or a suite," freshman Courtney Pettit said. "You still get to see those friends and you still get to see them in classes. But on the weekend you're limited in how much you can hang out with them."
On the weekends, however, the players have a different opportunity. Conditioning and practice in the fall allow the athletes to bond, but the long hours spent together on and off the field during the season have strengthened those ties.
"I think we bonded more with the other first-years at first because we were all in the same situation: We don't have cars, and we don't know what's going on," Pettit said. "But ... as the season progressed, we all as a team came really close together."
With seven freshmen on the team this spring, this year's group of new athletes is rather large, but Pittman said she does not believe the size of the group has been a problem.
"We all get along," Pittman said. "We are all different people but all of us would look out for each other no matter what the situation was. We'll be together for the next four years."
The first-year athletes are not the only ones making the transition into the Virginia softball season for the first time. The coaching staff, led by coach Eileen Schmidt, is brand new this season.
"Knowing that we're going to be together for the next four years," McCaskey said, "that we were the first first-year class under these coaches and coming into this situation together, I definitely think we had to bond because we had to go through this together."
Both the coaching staff and the players have made an improvement compared to last season. Though the team was swept by Virginia Tech this past weekend, the Cavaliers already have four ACC wins compared to last year's one.
"It means a lot, knowing that we can come in and help change the flow and turn this team around," McCaskey said. "We know what they went through but because we didn't [go through it], it's almost like we can help that much more. Just have a clean slate and give it all we can to have a better season."
Pittman said she believes the improvements to the team have made for a better environment.
"I think it has to do with the atmosphere: the new coaches and the change of attitude ...[and] the new style that we bring to the team as first-years," Pittman said. "I think in general the team is growing, which is why it's worked out for the better"
Read More
Virginia annihilated 41-14 in a must-win contest versus North Carolina
By Peter Kriebel | 17 hours agoJust about everything that could have gone wrong for Virginia football went wrong.
No. 24 women’s soccer not to be denied in late win over Clemson
By Sam Chun | 21 hours agoThe Cavaliers topped Clemson 1-0 in front of a packed out Klöckner Stadium.
Men’s soccer, totally discombobulated, capitulates early to No. 5 Pittsburgh
By Michael Liebermann | 23 hours agoPittsburgh set a program record for the quickest cluster of three goals.
