Cut the grass and dust off the infield. It’s time for America’s pastime at Indiana Wesleyan University. The Wildcat baseball and softball teams have been hard at work gearing up for the first pitch of the season tomorrow, each with the same thing to prove. That they belong in their respective conference tournament conversation.
“I’d rather have a team that would fight and die for each other than a team who is super-talented but the cohesion isn’t there,” said Steve Babinski, IWU’s first-year softball coach.
Lucky for him, a fight-and-die team is exactly what he thinks he has.
“I don’t say that to say that this team isn’t talented at all,” Babinski said. “But one of our big strengths is they’re playing for each other.”
These Wildcats are buying into that line of thinking too, as the team prepares for a new season that looks to be an improvement from last year.
“Anytime you have a team that clicks well, and you don’t really have any infighting or anybody that doesn’t really fit, then that’s the makings of a great team,” said center fielder Tamara Davis (sr). “I feel like we’ve accomplished that a lot in the fall and with this semester too.”
2011 was a rough year for IWU softball, in addition to being the last for Sue Bowman, the only coach in program history. After two consecutive 30-win seasons, the Wildcats tripped out of the gate and could never fully recover, partially due to key season-ending injuries in the first week of the season. The end result was a mediocre 22-21 finish and a first-day exit from the MCC Tournament.
But instead of calling 2012 a rebuilding year, IWU is trying to learn as much from last spring’s defeats as possible.
“That’s the one thing I will take away from last season is the closeness of the girls and how those relationships formed through the struggles we had to face as a team,” Davis said.
For Babinski, in his first season with the team, learning means trying new things and shaping a new look for the Wildcats.
“I’ve thrown a lot of curveballs at them, stuff they’ve never been asked to do before and they’ve been able to respond really well,” Babinski said. “We’re a completely different team today than we were in September. I’ve seen individual improvement across the board, and with that, the overall team is better.”
The return from injury of infielder Kristina Ross (so) and outfielder Kelsey Decker (sr) will also make the team better this season. With more pieces in the puzzle, IWU looks to return to its 30-win form and impress in the MCC Tournament.
Coach Babinski said he expects his team to rise above expectations, despite the Wildcats being picked in the polls to finish the regular season fourth in the MCC, a slot ahead of last year’s result.
“Even with that I think we’re going to surprise a lot of people,” he said.


