The 16th Division I varsity sport of softball will officially come to fruition next year. After four years at the club level, the team will finally move into the athletic department and help alleviate some of the Title IX concerns that the university has. Before the team reaches the next level, it will have to go through one more year as a club sport.

This year the team will play a series of games in both semesters. Though a final schedule has not been created, coach Jerald Bolen is continuing to work on adding more games.

"Right now the plan is for us to play mostly away games in the fall and then host more in the spring," said Bolen. "We are going to have a new fence put up and we are going to work on making our field even better. We hope to have 10 games in the fall and 20 in the spring."

Last year the team played fourteen games. Though they won only one game, they forced their opponents to beat them in extra innings in all of the other games.

"We did good last year," said Bolen. "We were competitive in all of our games, which I am very happy about. Our record doesn't tell how good we were."

Some of the fall games will include matches against William Carey, Concordia College, and Alabama state champions, Wallace Dothan.

According to Athletic Director Joe Gottfried, a head coach for the division I team will be announced later this week. The hiring of the head coach is the next step in getting the team ready for conference play. Currently the Sun Belt Conference has six teams competing for the championship including University of Louisiana-Lafayette and Florida International University. It was not clear about whether or not the new coach would work with the club softball team.

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Ben Ward
Assistant Sports Editor