By Mario Martinez—
As they open conference play, the NJCU Softball team is solely focusing on getting, better one day at a time.
“You can always be better,” said head coach Bridgette Quimpo. “That’s our motto for this season. We’re much focused on our progress and getting better every day. If we get one percent better, then we’ve gotten better as a team. I’m not focused on the wins and losses. I’m more focused on if we got better today.”
Under the helm of Quimpo for a 10th season (the longest tenure by any NJCU coach), the 2013 team is a very young one with almost half of its squad being freshmen. During the month of March, the Gothic Knights went 4-4 in the Gene Cusic Collegiate Classic in Fort Myers, FL. Ashley O’Beirne, 21, Psychology, from Wood-Ridge, feels the trip was great in terms of growth.
“Florida was good for team building. We have a lot of freshmen that are really young and it was good for them to gain experience and to be ready for competition when we got back to New Jersey. We’re working on progress this year. It’s more about getting better. So with every team we played, it helped us get better,” O’Beirne said.
Now in her senior season, O’Beirne has pitched 21 complete games with a 4.37 ERA and 78 strikeouts thus far. She credits practicing all off-season with her pitching coach her improvement and feels that the team’s mentality this year much different from other years which has given her high hopes for this season.
“This season I see us progressing and getting a lot better. It’s a different mentality this year. Our goal isn’t to win a national championship; our goal is to get better. It’s all about getting better instead of our win/loss column,” she said. “Instead of worrying about personal stats, we worry about how each other does. We’re more about progress which takes some pressure off the younger kids. That’s how we’re going about it and that’s what makes us a great team. We started like that in preseason, in Florida, and now in season. We’re taking it game by game instead of looking at the entire schedule.”
Like O’Beirne, Quimpo also has high hopes for the team but for her ace pitchers as well.
Quimpo said, “I told Ashley that this is going to be the best season of her career. She has worked so hard from her freshmen year to her senior year and gained so much experience, so much knowledge, and I’m excited to see her play. Her numbers have drastically improved already. She has already had more shutouts this season than her whole career.”
But O’Beirne isn’t the only senior Quimpo has high expectations for. Also in her final season, Rebecca Satz, 22, Media Arts, from Morris Plains,who is hitting an outstanding .405 average this season, is a spectacular athlete with unique intangibles which makes her a special player according to Quimpo.
“Rebecca Satz is really special. She’s the most passionate player I’ve ever had here at NJCU and in my mind, she is the best hitter in the NJAC. She is having a great season so far but what’s crazy about that is that she’s not having the best season of her career. We know what she can do. I’m really excited for her to breakout, shatter numbers, and have the best season of her career,” said Quimpo.
The passionate fire that burns within Satz is something that she acknowledges herself and feels that is has led to her high batting average.
“It takes a lot of hard work but at the same time it takes a lot of balance. Hitting is all mental but I have to make sure that physically and mentally, I’m doing everything that I need to do,” said Satz. “I understand I can hit thousands of balls on the off-season like I did this past summer, but really what it comes down to is my mentality and how I prepare for each progression and my game plan. So this year I feel I have a good approach at the plate because I’m comfortable with my game plan.”
But to Satz, batting isn’t everything. According to her, the past four years of her life have flown by and aside from playing softball, she feels the entire experience was life-changing.
“It wasn’t all about softball and I don’t think I would have gotten that anywhere else. Here, I got to play softball of course, but I also got a new whole family. I was taught life lessons, lessons about softball and coaching,” she said. “I’ve learned so much about the game and now I’m able to pass it down to kids playing today. I feel like I got a whole experience from it.”
With five freshmen on a team of 12 players, the NJCU Softball team has stuck to their motto and has been continually improving.
Faith Ely, 19, Criminal Justice, from Vienna, has enjoyed her experience so far and said, “Coach is very good with getting to the nitty-gritty of softball. She doesn’t complain about winning and losing. She’s more concerned with how we get better and how we’re doing. Because of that, I feel we have gotten a lot better.”
From day one, knowing the lack of experience for some of the players on the team, Quimpo has made it imperative to improve the team as the season progresses. She has set small goals throughout the season which act as checkpoints for the team. If the team works according to her system, she feels that by the end of the season, the will be playing their best ball.
