Lady Raiders’ big offseason

Hello, everyone and welcome back to the Huddle, this week we are talking about the Rice Lady Raiders Softball team.

The Lady Raiders finished their season last week losing both their games against Industrial and Columbus. Let’s just go ahead and rip this band-aid off while we are here too, they finished the season 0-26.

It has happened to every team throughout their history. Losing seasons or in this case winless seasons, happen. But it is only a small part of why we are huddled up today.

Look going 0-26 sucks, and it breaks my heart for this team because they want to win games, they want to be competitive, and they have so much underrated talent that it’s crazy. I’m sure they don’t want to hear their record said out loud, but that’s the beauty of sports because when you see a team that performed well or one that had a lot of success, it always intrigues me.

When looking at the Lady Raiders, their biggest issue was mentally losing the game before the first pitch was thrown. Let me explain a little further so I don’t get in trouble.

When I ask myself why did a team struggle throughout the season, the first thing I go and look at is body language. Body language in sports is the game within the game, the mental game if you will.

Varsity sports are an intimidating beast. All eyes are on them. They announce all the scores during the morning announcements, so basically everyone at the school knew they were a struggling team.

For this team to lack confidence is understandable because their peers are hearing how tough the season is going and probably making fun of them for it, I’m sure we would all struggle confidence- wise.

I say it is because of their confidence because when they played, they looked scared to fail and mess up a play and have even more eyes on them because they messed up a play. But playing like that only leads to more mistakes, and this team is too good to be making those mistakes.

So, this offseason is going to be big for the Lady Raiders in terms of growth both on the softball field but in their own minds. I’m telling you guys now if that teams finds their confidence and swagger over the summer, they are going to make a lot of noise and quiet a lot of those who were making fun of them this season.

I’m anxious to see what happens next with this team, but until next time, thank you everyone for reading the Huddle.