Dom Amore: How UConn softball handled the blows and clawed back to the NCAA Tournament
STORRS — A championship standard and culture, painstakingly built over six years for UConn softball, sailed into the perilous seas of college athletics, circa 2025. After a breakthrough Big East title, playing in the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 24 years, UConn softball lost two of their program-changing players to well-resourced power conference schools in the transfer portal: Grace Jenkins, who went to Arizona , and her sister Hope, to Ole Miss . .
A large roster of seniors and grad students moved on, too. The new season began with four wins, 15 losses. “We were in the locker room kind of brainstorming what we wanted our identity to be,” senior Kaitlyn Kibling said.
“We realized it’s going to take every single person, and we wanted that to be the center. After the beginning of our season, we reflected, and we thought, ‘we know how to play softball, we’re making it much bigger than it is. '” Dom Amore’s Sunday Read: For this UConn coach, 800 wins only half the story; a killer slate; more As conference play began, UConn had adopted the catch phrase, “1 through 21” to guide its long, uphill fight to get back to where it finished last year.
The old grit, confidence and reliance on one another began to kick in. “It really kind of came together against Arkansas (March 20-22), we put up a super competitive game against them in the Sunday of our series,” said pitcher Jessica Walter, a grad transfer from Providence. “We had a meeting with each other, let’s be honest and let it all out on the table.
And going forward, (knowing) we could hang with Arkansas, the Big East was ours. ” After an 11-game winning streak, the Huskies were in contention for the regular season title, which they eventually shared with Providence with an 18-6 record. Over last weekend in Rosemont, Ill.
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