Dickinson softball, coming off a 12-25 season, has a path towards improvement. 

I sat down with Coach Matthew Richwine and Team Captain Lindsey Kucker ’23 to discuss the upcoming softball season. Richwine has confidence: “We’re pretty young, but we’re very talented, with the new class coming in. We also have a strong Senior class. I think we will have games where we play pretty well but I also think we will have games where we have growing pains,” he said.

Kucker ’23 added, “We’ve been working super hard and I’m super excited because the talent we have this year is really good. We have really good returners as well as a lot of really good incoming Freshmen and everyone is super excited.” 

Richwine said that this group of first-years is “a well-rounded class. They really fill the whole field. Overall, most of them were very impactful on their high school teams and other teams and they definitely have potential to be one of our strongest classes of the past several years.”

In response to questions about integrating new players while trying to improve on last season’s record, Richwine said, “we don’t have goals in terms of X amounts of wins but the biggest goal we have is to just game in and game out play well, composed and do the little things every day that put us in a good position to win. If we do the little things every day in practice and keep our composure in games, we should put ourselves in a good situation.”

Last season, the team completely relied on two pitchers, Riley Kuehn ’23 and Lindsay Kucker ’23. The two pitchers pitched 216.2 of the 249 innings played. They did all you could ask for. Kuehn and Kucker consistently kept Dickinson in games but, understandably, the wear and tear on their bodies meant their numbers got worse later in the year. This year, that should not be the case. Coach Richwine said, “I think we are going to be a lot deeper. We only had two real pitchers last year and had to rely on them too heavily. It also made us use players who weren’t recruited to pitch at a college level. Gaining two pitchers who are used to the pressure will put us in a different situation.” Dickinson lost many close games last year when they could not get a clutch hit late in a game. Richwine said that the Red Devils’ increased depth this year should help them cash in their opportunities. “Last year we had a lot of games where we looked really good in the first game of a doubleheader and not very good in the second one and just having some depth should help that. That applies for the offense too.” He said,

“We brought in a group of well rounded batters as well. We brought in players with different capacities. Some have great speed while some are more about power. We have a much greater ability to adjust to the game situations and won’t be stuck in unfavorable matchups. There’s a definite improvement in depth.”

With the new First-years, Dickinson will be able to adjust to certain game situations. The ability to make in game adjustments is something that is important to Coach Richwine and should help them succeed.