MANKATO, Minn. – Following a UMAC Tournament championship a year ago, the Bethany Lutheran softball team will begin a quest to attain that same result tomorrow when they open up play for the year. The Vikings will play eight games over the next two weekends as part of the BLC Dome Invitational, kicking things off tomorrow morning against Concordia (Minn.) and Carleton at 8 a.m. and 10:30 a.m., respectively.
Head Coach Dan Nessler, now entering his seventh season at the helm, knows the team may have a target on its back this year but is focused on improvement in the first few weeks.
"I think we're just trying to stick to our business," said Nessler. "The girls have been doing a great job thus far working hard and working smart to get prepared for the weekend. We'll be playing some good teams and we're just excited to go compete. At the end of the day we don't have to be perfect in February, we're trying to march towards May when we're hitting on all cylinders and playing good softball."
Headlining the returners for the Vikings will be All-Region player Kaija Mork, who returns a .426 batting average, .667 slugging percentage, and team-most 46 RBI and 4 home runs. Katelyn Hallbach will also return to the lineup after All-Conference honors last year in which she hit .398 and added a team-best 26 stolen bases.
"We'll need to lean to on some of those kids that were starters last year and that went to a regional tournament," said Nessler. "We need their leadership, whether it's our captains in Elizabeth Cizek and Ana Christofferson, or Kayla Senne back in the circle and Kaija Mork coming off All-Region honors. Then we'll have to depend on other returners like Katelyn Hallbach, Haley Stockman, Bailey Erlandson, and Jolyne LeClair. So we'll have kids that need to get in there and pick up where they left off last year, but there are going to be some players who didn't get a ton of chances last year that we're going to be relying on to go produce."
Bethany will also return its top arm last year in Senne, who earned UMAC Tournament MVP for her performance. Last year, Senne threw 169.0 innings, posting a 2.73 ERA while striking out 184 batters.
The Vikings, who were picked first in the UMAC preseason coaches poll, know that they will have a tough road ahead to repeat. "Mentally I think sometimes it's easier to be the team chasing than to be the ones being chased," said Nessler. "We know that we were voted first in the preseason so now we need to go work like that if we want to stay there. All these tough opponents we play in the dome and in Arizona will hopefully have us ready to go in early April against UMAC competition."
Bethany will open up conference play on April 6th this season, with the conference tournament taking place May 11th-13th with the No. 1 seed as the host.
2023 Schedule
2023 Roster
