Southern Miss softball season begins with a battle against four other universities in the Black and Gold Challenge this weekend.
With the football season long gone and the basketball season rounding its final games, Baseburg is back for Southern Miss. Southern Miss’s Golden Eagle Softball team starts their season on Friday, Feb. 6 in the Black and Gold Challenge.
The Black and Gold challenge is a battle of five softball teams competing in games throughout the entire weekend. Southern Miss, Louisiana Tech (LA Tech), University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), and Southeast Missouri State will all face off in this year’s challenge.
Senior Pitcher Natalie Herrington is looking forward to this weekend’s challenge.
“Our schedule is setting us up for success,” said Herrington. “We are playing some teams like LA Tech that are going to be in our conference next year, and we play them a good amount of times, and just our whole schedule is setting us up well for conference even though we’re not facing those specific teams.”
Softball Head Coach Natalie Poole echoes this optimistic anticipation of the season.
“I think that we are talented and I’m excited to go into this season,” said Poole. “We want to perform better than we have, and there is an expectation to do that, like just to continue to rise in this conference and be more competitive and that’s hard. This is a very good conference, and so we’ve got a job to do to raise up the level of play that’s been here.”
Southern Miss finished the previous season with a 23-29 record and a 10-14 record versus Sun Belt conference opponents. This put them in the bottom 3 of Sun Belt teams. In their preseason polls, Sun Belt coaches put Southern Miss in the second to last place in the conference, only beating out Georgia State.
Despite these rankings, Coach Poole looks to push for a very spirited team to start the year.
“That’s kinda talked about from the top down with Dr. Joe Paul and also something we instill in them as well,” said Poole. “Our values for this team are about service, they’re about mentality, about being tough in all situations, taking initiative. And so, we definitely kind of instill those values and qualities, and we really push to make sure we’re seeing those types of things.”
The Black and Gold Challenge starts off at 9 A.M. at Southern Miss’s Softball Complex. The Golden Eagles play their first game at 4:30 P.M. on Feb. 6 and play twice more on Feb. 7 and Feb.8.
Tickets and game information can be found at southernmiss.com.
