The softball team began its season this past weekend in Tallahassee, Fla. at the Dugout Club Classic. The team dropped two games on Friday afternoon, losing 10-1 to Elon and 10-2 to Florida State. They then played a much closer game with Elon on Saturday but dropped the matchup 4-3. They lost 8-0 to Florida State on Saturday afternoon, before losing a closer 3-2 battle to the undefeated University of Alabama on Sunday afternoon.
Jensin Hall ’27, the 2024 Ivy League Pitcher of the Year, leads the Big Green’s pitching rotation, with Charley Maddox ’29, Anna Fagan ’28 and Isabel Kirby ’28 looking to be other contributors in the circle. Faby Serna ’27 currently leads the team in batting average and hits after one weekend of play, with Samantha Gresham ’29 and Laura Ben-Ezra ’26 also shaping up to be major contributors.
Head coach Jen Williams is entering her eighth season as head coach of the Dartmouth softball team. Under her leadership, the team qualified for the Ivy League tournament for the first time in 2024, and she has coached 15 all-Ivy players, including two Ivy League Players of the Year. The Dartmouth sat down to talk to Williams about the season as it kicks off.
This previous weekend, you went to Florida and got some close results against Elon and Alabama. How did you feel about this opening weekend?
JW: We felt like they gave us what we were hoping to get out of it. Since the winter was so cold, we have only been able to get outside one time in Hanover — that’s unusual even for us. We knew there were going to be some defensive challenges this weekend, but we saw the team make a lot of really good adjustments and start to settle into what our game is going to look like as we get to play more. So it was exciting to see them leveling up throughout the weekend.
In the pitchers circle, Hall, Maddox and Fagan saw action this weekend. From preseason and from this past weekend, what is your outlook on the pitching rotation for this season?
JW: It’s early days yet. We are working through a couple of minor injuries but we feel very excited about the staff this year. They’ve been working incredibly hard all year, throwing live every week. We feel that we have a rotation that’s going to be very tough in conference play. We’re looking forward to seeing how we do this weekend at University of Central Florida and letting them get to work in the circle again.
On the offensive side of things, what is your outlook on the team’s hitting for this season?
JW: We are very excited about hitting too. The training we’ve been doing and the changes we’ve made are paying off, even in our first five games, which is very exciting. I was excited about how fast the team made adjustments and how hard they were swinging the bat. We had very few strikeouts looking, maybe just one or two. And that’s highly unusual for your first weekend out. They were doing exactly what our hitting coach, Sydney Benz, was asking them. They were making good adjustments to different levels of pitchers that were being put in. Having to go that deep in the bullpen against Alabama is a big deal and that was largely because our hitters were making great adjustments across that game.
Playing at Dartmouth can be challenging because the New Hampshire winter forces a later start to the season and prevents home games for the first month. Does this affect the team as the season has started?
JW: It does, there’s really no way to avoid that. Most years, we are able to get outside on the lacrosse or field hockey turf and get some fly balls. This winter has just been really brutal. It’s a real testament to our outfield and our defense as a whole.
One of the toughest things they have to deal with is high and deep fly balls. There’s plays that they made that are really impressive considering they’ve had two or three days of fly balls before we played. There’s balls they got very close to catching that we will catch once we’ve had a chance to rep it outside more often. We’re hoping that when we get back to campus after this weekend that there’ll be more opportunities to get out on the turf surfaces before they start clearing our fields in the middle of March, because that really is the next step in training for us.
What is something that you’re most looking forward to this season with this team in particular?
JW: We have been in Florida for the whole week, because of the weather in the Northeast. It’s a pretty special team that can go from a four-day trip to an 11-day trip, hold themselves together and stay as productive-minded and positive as this team has. They’ve been working hard to continue to show up for each other and to weather this experience together. I’m very proud of them for that.
I’m looking forward to playing a home stand in April. I’m very excited to see what we can do being at home for four weekends straight. I think we have an opportunity to have a lot of consistency in our performance this year and really dominate.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
