After last weekend's struggles at the plate, the Ball State softball team (1-3) hopes to improve its performance this weekend at the University of Georgia Tournament.
Coach Terri Laux believes last weekend's struggles on offense were a matter of inexperience for her newcomers and was more mental than physical.
"There are a lot of young kids out there. They're all very, very good hitters," she said. "Now it's just a matter of transferring everything we've done in the last two months (of practice) to game situations."
Heading into the weekend, Laux hopes to see her team's confidence, consistency, and discipline at the plate improve. Despite the team's struggles in the first three games, she was pleased by the team's performance in the consolation game against Youngstown State.
"Our focus is going to be to improve on the past weekend," she said. "If we can continue to hit the ball hard like we did in that last game on Sunday, eventually they'll fall in."
Ball State will be facing some difficult competition over the weekend. The Cardinals face the likes of Maryland and Winthrop on Friday, then battle sixth-ranked Georgia, followed by UNC Wilmington on Saturday. Championship play is Sunday.
"We're going to have to play our very best and really come out with an aggressive type of game against them," Laux said of Georgia.
But Laux wants the focus of her team to be on themselves and not worry about who's across the field.
"We want to get ourselves in a position where we're being consistent with what we do on the offensive side of the game," Laux said.
"It's going to be a good tournament, a little bit stronger teams than what we saw last weekend," she added. "We really need everybody to step up and assume some sort of leadership role and really focus on taking it to the next level."
The starting lineup is not yet decided, Laux said, because she wants to see what her players can do in different lineups.
"There is going to be a point in time where we start going with a set lineup and that'll help with the consistency," she said.
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