We need Ashley to win 15-to-20 games this season for us to be successful. That puts a lot of responsibility on her and our other pitchers, but she's got the size, the strength, and she's an athlete.

If we had gotten to play our first games, it would have been better.

She was a great player for us last year.

We think that she's going to be a big leader for us.

It seemed to me to be a lot more pressure for us. We played so many close games last year. It was always like 'if we lose, we had a great season.' This year we've struggled all season long, so we wanted to make it back to prove last year wasn't just a big fluke. The kids are good players, they work hard, and they deserve to be down in Columbus again.

You take away those last nine games from us and we wind up in third or fourth place. (But) you have more time to prepare for (conference) games and you have more time to play other conferences, which is pretty interesting.