After the program’s second trip to the MIAA tournament last April, the UNK softball team returns to action this week. With added depth in the circle and behind the bats, the Lopers have a new expectation and a chance for their first winning season since 2012.
Last season, UNK finished 23-27 and graduated six seniors. Regardless, coach Katie Ackerman said this year has a fresh mentality.
“I woke up Jan. 1, 2026, and just felt really, really good for the first time ever of just walking into the season,” Ackerman said. “I’ve been really optimistic about a lot of teams, but this just feels different. These kids put their heads down. They grind. They want to win. They want to be better.”
On top of the Lopers returning three of their four pitchers who saw game action last spring, UNK welcomes four additional pitchers to the squad.
“It almost gives you a sense of relief,” Ackerman said. “You don’t have to maybe hold on to an arm until the seventh and hope that they’re still good to go. I know Jerzie (Schindler) late last year had an injury, so we kind of had to keep kids going and hope our offense would just keep us in it. This year, I feel like if an offense kind of tags our arms, one of our pitchers, we can make that switch pretty quick and feel confident about it.”
Schindler, who had a team-best 4.93 ERA in almost 100 innings, said the group worked on being more intentional with their pitches.
“One thing that we’ve really focused on is location and spin,” Schindler said. “I think my freshman year, I didn’t really know what to expect coming in, so I kind of just threw what I knew how to throw at the time.”
In addition to a deeper pitching staff, the Lopers return their top three hitters from a year ago, with additions such as Texas A&M-International transfer Zaria Brigham to bolster depth.
“It felt like last year, we kind of got lucky and then hoped one of our best offensive hitters would hit them in,” Ackerman said. “This year, I feel like we have more depth to go to if somehow a hitter is just having a bad day.”
With two MIAA conference tournament berths in four years, the team is ready for a new expectation this season.
“Every year it just seems like our goals are always, let’s just make it to the MIAA tournament and see what happens,” Ackerman said. “Really, we’ve done it twice in the last seven seasons I’ve been here, and they haven’t done it before. So, it was kind of our goal of like, let’s get to the MIAA tournament, and that’s now our standard.”
Senior shortstop and two-time All-MIAA selection Mary Chvatal was UNK’s top bat last spring and said, despite spending the first two months of the season on the road, the team is ready to get started.
“We’ve got some pretty good preseason games set up,” Chvatal said. “I think it’ll be a tough preseason on the road. We have 26 or 27 games right out the gate on the road that it’ll be a lot of learning moments and everything, but it’s nothing we can’t handle.”
The Lopers will take the field for the first time at the Concordia Kickoff Classic in Irvine, California. UNK will face Jessup University and Cal State Monterey Bay on Friday, Concordia University Irvine and Cal State San Bernardino on Saturday and Dominican University on Sunday.
“I think this group of girls, we just have a dawg mentality, I would say,” Schindler said. “We have kind of a no-pressure, but also a mindset where we need to prove everybody wrong.”
