The Bowling Green softball team is gearing up to begin its Mid-American Conference portion of its schedule with two games against conference rival Toledo.
The team is currently 7-13, but is staying optimistic with a long season still ahead.
“We are extremely fired up to start the MAC season. Opening weekend of the MAC is always an exciting time but to open with Toledo makes the weekend that much bigger,” head coach Shannon Salsburg said. “The team has had a solid week of preparation and we are ready to start our bid for a MAC title.”
The preseason coaches’ poll that was released Tuesday chose the Falcons to finish sixth in the MAC this year.
Toledo will come into the game 12-16 so far this season and won its last outing against Liberty. The games will be Toledo’s home opener for this year.
The Rockets offense is hitting .283 percent so far and has an earned run average of 5.03. Celeste Fidge has been the leader for the team, batting .439 to go with 36 hits out of 82 at bats.
For the Falcons, despite their record their offense has improved a lot since last year. The team has scored 34 first inning runs so far this season, including one 10 run first inning early in the season against Caniscus.
Sophomore Aspen Searle has been having a good season, leading the team in slugging percentage, on base percentage, RBIs, runs, doubles and homers. She has 17 runs in total along with 13 RBIs off of 63 at bats and 21 hits.
Stealing is something that the team has worked on under Salsburg this season with 22 so far this year. Searle, Marina Cobbs, and Molly Holliday combine for 19 of them. Cobbs is perfect in the category at 7-7 so far.
Junior Braiden Dillow, who was named MAC pitcher of the week earlier this year, has an earned run average of 3.86 and is 3-6 in the win-loss category so far. Senior Jamie Kertes has an earned run average of 4.67 and is 3-4 on the year.
The major problem that the Falcons will look to fix in this next series is sending runners home. The Falcons have 134 hits as a team this season and just 68 RBIs compared to their opponents 88. After the first inning, the team seems to slow down.
“We need to continue to work on pushing runs across the board the entire game,” Salsburg said.
Game one of the series will start at 2 p.m. in Toledo.
