With baseball and softball season weeks away, coaches from around the American Conference have made their preseason picks before the upcoming campaigns.
Wichita State’s softball team was predicted to finish third out of 10 teams in the league Wednesday morning, while the baseball team was picked to finish eighth on Dec. 30.
Coaches picked Florida Atlantic to win the conference on the softball side. The Owls garnered eight first-place votes and 80 points overall. East Carolina was picked to win the league for the third-straight season in baseball with four first-place votes and 75 points.
Last season, Shocker baseball suffered 36 losses — including back-to-back defeats in the American Conference Championship — which tied for the second-worst season in program history. They barely squeezed into the postseason tournament after sweeping Memphis in the last series of the regular season.
However, with 31 new faces on this year’s roster, third-year head coach Brian Green is confident that the progress made in the fall will carry over this spring.
“It’s been an extremely positive fall,” Green said in an interview with The Sunflower last December. “We’ve been able to bring that many guys together, and we’ve got a really good vibe.”
WSU’s softball team, led by 15-year head coach Kristi Bredbenner, finished last season with a 15-11-1 conference record to secure a fifth-place spot in the standings headed into its conference tournament. The Shockers were eliminated in the quarterfinals after falling behind 6-0 in the early innings against North Texas.
According to D1 Softball, WSU softball recruited a top-50 freshman class of 2026.
The Shockers’ softball team begins its season at the Getterman Classic from Feb. 6-8 in Waco, Texas.
The baseball team starts its season at Eck Stadium for the first time since 2021 with a four-game series against Northern Colorado from Feb. 13-15. Valentine’s Day will feature a doubleheader against the Bears beginning at 12:05 p.m.
