The Black Hills State University Women’s softball team began their 2014 season over the weekend. They traveled down to Las Vegas where they played a series of five games in three days at the Desert Stinger Tournament. They started out by playing Western Washington (17-7) and Augustana (12-2) on Friday. Saturday they faced Norte Dame (14-12) and Montana State Billings (11-8). Before returning home Sunday, they played one last game against Western Oregon (12-9), unable to bring home a win.

Amy Gurney, coach of eight years for the women’s team, felt that the games started out strong, but the team could not maintain that strength through seven innings of a game. Gurney says that the pitching staff is young and they are just starting to get in the swing of playing college softball, which is what seemed to be the team’s biggest struggle while in Las Vegas.

“Offensively we are right where we want to be,” Gurney said.

Coach Gurney hopes to be ranked in the top eight this season and make it to the conference tournament.

Sara Schmid, senior and captain of the team felt that the biggest factor in the losses of the games was not being able to put their pitching, hitting and defense together throughout an entire game.

The team has been practicing since the beginning of the spring semester, but Schmid did not feel that the lack of being able to practice outside more than a handful of times was much of a factor.

“I feel that the team was prepared for the tournament, however, I personally was not because I just got cleared a week ago from having surgery in fall 2013,” Schmid said. “We will take away from the losses in Las Vegas and use that to build off of to take into conference.”

BHSU Women’s Softball’s next home game is Feb. 22-23 against CSU Pueblo.

To keep updated with stats and game times, visit bhsuathletics.com.