The Lamar softball team is off to its best start since the 2016 season, winning five of its first six games.
For the first time in program history, the Lady Cards earned national recognition as they were ranked 23rd in the D1Softball.com Mid-Major Top 25 poll in the beginning of the season.
LU head coach Amy Hooks said the team’s strengths are the experience of the returning players.
“They got some postseason experience going into the tournament together,” Hooks said. “I think just the camaraderie they have and the trust that they’ve built over a year of playing together, is definitely one of our biggest strengths of coming back in — being really familiar with the league, because they have that year under their belt, but just playing together.”
Two of the Lady Cards’ losses have been to top-10 teams, No. 1 University of Texas at Austin and No. 6 University of Tennessee. Despite the tough schedule, LU are doing better than last season when they only played one nationally-ranked team.
The Lady Cardinals were picked to finish fifth in the 2025 Southland Conference Softball Preseason Poll. Last year, LU finished 26-25 overall and 12-12 in SLC play, where they placed fifth.
Lamar recruited nine new players — three transfers and six true freshmen. Coach Hooks said the new additions help the team’s chemistry.
We pride ourselves on being family oriented and being really open arms to whoever the newcomers are,” Hooks said. “I think the transfers have really helped. When you come from different backgrounds, regardless of your story, you can bring some of the good and the bad with you, and that really helped the locker room.”
Hooks said leaving runners on base was the team’s weakness last season and the team has practiced being more efficient at the plate.
“It’s a hard pill to swallow,” Hooks said. “We saw (that) as an approach we took this year when working on the swings. I think we have a pitching staff that can keep us in a lot of ball games. So, making sure that, with a good pitching staff, we have really good defense and then hitters that can go score runs for us.”
Last season the Lady Cardinals made it to the SLC tournament but were eliminated in the first round after losing two games. This season the team has its eyes set on not only winning the SLC tournament, but also making an appearance in the NCAA tournament for the first time since the program was instituted 13 years ago.
“ I think the Southland is up for grabs this year,” Hooks said. “So, the ultimate goal is to go and win a conference championship. But I want these kids, I want ‘Team 13’ to experience NCAA postseason, and the only way we get that done, typically history has shown, is we have to win the conference tournament.”
The Lady Cardinals are currently 6-5 overall and are set to play Jacksonville State, Feb. 28, in Hattiesburg, Mississippi in the Black and Gold challenge tournament. The first pitch will be at 9 a.m.