MARSHALL, Texas – A new look East Texas Baptist University softball team will hit the field on Saturday, February 10 as they open the 2018 season against Centenary College. ETBU is coming off a 38-win season and has to replace a senior class that put their name into the program's record books.

ETBU returns several key players from the 2017 NCAA Division III Marshall Regional Championship team including NFCA All-American first team selection Linzie Lewis. Lewis broke the program record for hits last year at 74 and .440. Defensively, three pitchers return in Jordan Anderson, Rocki Tello, and McKayla Hendrix. Anderson and Tello are both All-ASC selections and combined to win 31 games last year. Hendrix brings back a 1.71 ERA and only walked three batters.

Below is a question and answer with head coach Janae Shirley about some of the changes in the program this past offseason.

On receiving their NCAA Regional Rings from last season
"Well, it was definitely a cool opportunity to be able to celebrate that team just one last time. That was a really special group for me personally, but also for our program. Those six seniors that we had last year, five of whom were four years, were really huge in our program. Just to be able to honor them one last time was really neat."

On the emotions of the team and their new clubhouse
"We're just incredibly blessed with our program. I've been here for a long time as both a player and a coach and just to see the growth of our program and the investment that our university is willing to take into not just our athletic program, but a female athletic sport is really neat about our university. It's just been really amazing. It was really neat for our alumni to come back and look at that. You know that had to do a lot with what they built. It was really neat to share that with them."

On practicing on their new turf field
"It's been a pretty seamless transition as far as transferring from our dirt field to turf field. We have a really young team this year and a lot of those kids spent summers playing on tur fields. A lot of them are used to it. One of the transitions we were a bit curious about practicing all the time on turf and going to dirt. We did that yesterday and it wasn't an issue. I think ours plays so close to our natural surface that it hasn't been an issue. But we've loved it. We've enjoyed every minute of it. It's opened up opportunities for us to practice more and be able to get more done. So we've been really excited to have it."

On opening the season at home this season against Centenary
"I know our kids are definitely excited about it. We have such a young group this year that there's going to be a lot of different emotions. I think that they're ready for it though. They're ready to just start playing somebody other than themselves every day in practice. They're looking forward to it and we're looking forward to see what really makes our team work. We're excited to start that."

ETBU's Taylor Field, which is all turf now, will open up the new season with a new clubhouse at 6:00 p.m. vs. Centenary.