After her team’s worst weekend of the season, one coach Laura Watten called “one of the toughest I’ve had in my career,” the Terrapins softball team is looking to get back to its winning ways on its home turf.
The Terps (11-6) host three schools at the Maryland Round Robin this weekend as part of Wounded Warrior Weekend. Princeton, Kent State and Rhode Island will make their way to College Park to face the Terps, who stand out as the tournament’s strongest team. Still, they have a lot of work to do to make up the ground they lost last weekend — the team dropped four of five games after winning 10 of its first 12.
“I don’t know if it’s about the tough competition or if it’s mental,” Watten said Sunday. “But we hit a really rough spot.”
Pitcher Kendra Knight suffered her first two losses of the season in Tuscaloosa, Ala., last weekend, after entering the tournament 7-0. She lost her command for much of the weekend, but the senior’s performance doesn’t seem to have her coach worried.
“It’s probably a just bump in the road,” Watten said. “She’s a senior … she has experience going through those.”
Still, it would seem difficult for the Terps to hit the field this weekend without thinking back to their 1-4 showing in Alabama. While the four losses came against two solid teams in Massachusetts and No. 2 Alabama, the Terps were outscored 48-9 in those four contests, including a 19-1 eyesore against the Crimson Tide.
The Terps, though, said they’ll look ahead, not backward.
“We’ve got to relax and not beat ourselves down and not dwell on the weekend,” Watten said.
The Tigers, Golden Flashes and Rams are a combined 9-19 this season, and Kent State has six of the wins. But wins are wins, and the Terps have the opportunity to claim five this weekend. ACC play isn’t far off, and a weekend sweep would give the Terps a respectable 16-6 mark in the middle of March.
Still, Watten’s one-day-at-a-time approach has become pervasive this season. After leaving Tuscaloosa, that weekend was a thing of the past.
“That’s the stuff we’ve got to learn from,” Watten said, “and it’s good that it’s happening now and not in the middle of April.”
benscher@umdbk.com
