Softball ended their regular season with three consecutive wins against Beloit and North Central this week. The team was greeted by great weather and a solid fan turnout due to Sunday’s “Sausage Fest.” Chicago enters the weekend with a final record of 23-11 and will have to wait for Monday to see whether or not they have made regionals.

However, due to an unforeseen amount of challenges this year, second year shortstop Vicky Tomaka is proud of the team for doing as well as they did.

“We’re excited to find out about regionals,” she said. “We’re also very happy with the North Central game, and how strong we finished out the year. If it were to end on that, it’d be okay. We gave it a great shot.”

In addition to dealing with a number of injuries, the team had to adjust to new players and new positions—Tomaka said that “we could have done better but we did really well with what we had.”

Their greatest challenge, according to Tomaka, was the sense of unity in spite of all the obstacles.

“It was hard to achieve a kind of cohesion,” she said. “Everyone worked together well though, and we discovered our strengths and weaknesses. Playing together was a fresh slate.”

Playing together and reaching that cohesion certainly paid off last Sunday, as they won both games against Beloit, in their end-of-season celebration during “Sausage Fest,” an event that served up baseball and softball games with a side of sausages and ice cream.

“It was awesome to have all these fans there, and it was such a nice day out,” Tomaka said. “We’ve had such bad weather so we haven’t really had many out to watch us.”

Tomaka feels that their win against North Central this Tuesday rounded out the season as they started to get hits, ultimately resulting in their 8-5 win.

“We finally started hitting the ball hard,” Tomaka said. “We got up there, relaxed, played naturally and got a lot of hits.”