Wichita State beat Cowley College 21-1 in their final fall exhibition game, ending the season 7-1 on Monday.

The Shockers’ pitchers struck out 14 batters, a fall season high. Junior Erin McDonald recorded seven strikeouts in three innings, freshman Kiersten Nixon pitched three strikeouts and redshirt senior Bailey Lange had four. 

Head Coach Krisiti Bredbenner praised the pitchers for their development.

“The people that have been working their hardest are the pitchers,” Bredbenner said. “We are seeing a difference in their abilities right now. Today, their goal was to get ahead 70% of the time in the game and they were well over that and that’s a big improvement from the first couple games we had.”

WSU scored in four straight innings, establishing their lead against the Tigers.Cowley’s lone run came in the eighth inning from freshman Kyara Williams. 

The fall season is a learning experience for both the players and the coaches.

“The fall season is just really an evaluation period for us to figure out what we need to do here and moving forward in these next couple of months and in January to face much better competition than we faced tonight,” Bredbenner said. 

Sophomore Adi Reese also said the fall season prepares the team for the future. 

“Fall has been very mental for us and being mentally strong has helped us to get better and that’s one thing that’s going to help us next season,” Reese said. “We had some goals and we achieved them and we had some goals that we didn’t achieve.” 

There are several takeaways for the Shockers this fall season. According to Bredbenner, they could’ve done better on offense and need to improve on their defense. 

“We had some really good innings in the circle, but one of the things we got to fix is that we had four lead off walks,” Bredbenner said. “We are trying to drive the ball up the middle, which happened in the latter part of the game but in the first nine innings a lot of our hits were down the line in the middle pulled.

If they can make these improvements while building on their strengths, the Shockers would then be a formidable team, according to Bredbenner.

“It’s great that the adjustments were made, but we need to see those adjustments being made the second time through the line up or earlier through the game.”