Wichita State softball coach Kristi Bredbenner knew it wasn’t going to be a quick fix.

Her first season leading the Shockers netted only 15 wins to go along with 40 losses, but there is plenty of reason to believe year two is going to go a lot better.

“I think the culture has finally changed. These girls work hard—they want to compete,” Bredbenner said. “One of the biggest changes from this year to last year is chemistry. This group gets along. I think every single one of them wants to be here. That was something that last year we didn’t have. I’m excited to coach this team.”

Even though the Shockers’ season doesn’t officially begin until February, the team was able to take the field this weekend, beginning what will be an eight-game fall schedule.

“I think all of us were pretty pumped,” junior pitcher Sloan Anderson said. “We all have a chip on our shoulder from last season. It was fun to go out and play again and hopefully we can keep building on what we are doing. Get better every game.”

The Shockers hosted Pittsburg State and Johnson County Community College on Saturday, going 1-1.

WSU lost game one against Pittsburg State 2-0. While the players may cite being overly excited as the reason for the loss, Bredbenner’s reason was more about basic fundamentals.

“I don’t think that the first loss this afternoon was because we took the team lightly, I just don’t think we played well,” she said. “I thought defensively we made some mistakes.”

Whatever the reason was, the Shockers got it fixed in time to beat JCCC 5-0 in the second game.

Anderson led the Shockers on the mound with a one-hit effort in five innings.

“In the second game, we knew we didn’t want to lose again and we went out, scored some runs,” Anderson said. “Defense was awesome. We just turned it around really fast, which is a good thing.”

The team isn’t too concerned about wins or losses this fall. A year ago the Shockers went 8-0 in fall play, but didn’t necessarily see that success translate into the spring.

The players understand their roles better this year and understand the need to get better after each game.

“We just know what’s expected of us. We are obviously going to make mistakes but we know right away how to fix those mistakes—that’s been the biggest difference in practice,” Anderson said. “We all know what we expect from each other and from ourselves, and are doing everything we can to get to the point that we know we should be at.”

The Shockers fall slate will continue on Saturday when they host Cowley County Community College and Western Oklahoma Community College. Game times are 4 p.m. and 6 p.m.

With only six fall games remaining, Bredbenner hopes her team can keep the same, hard-working mental approach to each of them.

“We got to be prepared to play everybody and these girls should be excited to play in the fall because you don’t really get that many opportunities to play instead of practice,” she said.