As the softball team’s regular season draws to an end, No. 25 N.C. State will look to continue a 15-game winning streak and sweep its fourth straight ACC opponent at Maryland this weekend.
The Wolfpack will play at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. Saturday and at 1 p.m. Sunday in College Park, Md.
According to senior third baseman Jen Chamberlin, sweeping ACC opponents has become a goal for the team.
“We’re playing really well as a team, and I think we want to continue,” Chamberlin said. “We’ve already talked about how we want to get three sweeps in a row. That’s something that’s in our heads.”
Chamberlin said part of the team’s recent success relies on the fact that it looks to run the score up as much as possible and hold nothing back against opponents. Winning, Chamberlin said, has become a matter of pride.
“We want to go out there and run it up on them,” Chamberlin said. “We just want to score a lot of runs on them and show them we’re the better team.”
A sweep of Maryland also bears significance in the team’s seeding in the ACC Tournament, Chamberlin said.
“We’re at the point where if Virginia Tech loses one game and we sweep Maryland, we’ll take first so that’s something we want,” Chamberlin said. “Seeding in the tournament isn’t that important, but it would be nice to say that we are first.”
According to Chamberlin, the team’s nine seniors all feel confident that this year’s team will repeat its ACC championship performance from a year ago.
“A lot of us are very confident because last year we’d never seen it before, so we were all wide eyed and didn’t know what was going on,” Chamberlin said. “Now that a majority of us have all been there, we’re more confident and really believe that we belong there. Not that we didn’t believe in ourselves last year, we were just new to the situation. Now we’re ready to play.”
Chamberlin also added this team’s success relies heavily on the idea that no particular player carries the entire team’s load.
“There are a lot of great players here, and we’re all different and that’s what makes us a great team,” Chamberlin said. “We don’t have a set superstar on this team. We have a team where everybody can contribute at different times.”
