After a 32-22 season, head coach Kyla Holas and the Cougars are ready to get back on the field and keep working hard.
Holas said she plans to rebuild the team from the bottom up this year, placing importance on looking at last year’s strengths and weaknesses.
“The things we try to do as a coaching staff is try to reinvent ourselves each year,” Holas said. “It’s really important that we sit down and evaluate some of our shortcomings and some of the things we did and make sure that every year we try to get a little bit better at something.”
With new assistant coach Greg Evans on board, 14-year veteran Holas hopes to make his addition as influential as possible.
“I am excited about that and also just in the recruiting,” Holas said. “We wanted to be able to get our hands on some other kids and really get some other coaches.”
A big factor of the Cougar’s success this year is the caliber of the team’s remaining and new players. With two of the team’s most important players, pitcher Deidre and catcher Haley Outon, having graduated, Holas looks to the returning talent to pick up where they left off.
“I do think (infielder) Selena Hernandez is someone who we’re really hoping to step in,” Holas said. “We did actually get a few transfer players that I think are going to be some big leaders for us as well.”
Holas said that the most important factors contributing to the strength of the team are the mentality of its players, the cooperation of the team and its fitness.
“We’re really coming together as a group of individuals and we understand that we’re all different, but all of us have to play together in order for us to be successful, and lastly learning to be in shape,” Holas said.
“We really spend most of the fall getting our base fundamentally and then getting strong in the weight room so we can handle a 56-game season.”
Holas tried to take last year’s postseason defeat as an educational moment and wants the team to build on the experience this season.
“I wanted them to really be present and not look past that moment and that feeling,” Holas said. “So they can remember it, because we were going to use that as motivation for this entire year.”
