NORMAL — The Illinois State softball team won the Missouri Valley Conference regular season championship with a 17-5 record last spring.
Yet heavy personnel losses led to ISU being forecast for sixth in the league’s preseason poll.
Will that motivate the Redbirds?
“I sure hope so,” said Coach Melinda Fischer, whose 37th season in the ISU dugout begins Thursday in a four-day tournament at South Florida in Tampa.
Senior outfielder Michele Calabrese is a willing rider on that motivational bus.
“I think we’re going to prove them wrong, for sure,” she said.