On this field there is no dirt, home plate is a piece of carpet and a home run is marked by a loud clang off of the bleachers.

Excuse the Syracuse softball team if they miss the dirt fields of Arizona.

For two weeks, the Orange has been practicing in the Carrier Dome, chomping at the bit to return to a real softball field in a bid to secure the team’s first win of the season after dropping five games at the Kajikawa Classic in Tempe, Ariz.

‘Mentally it’s a hard adjustment,’ SU head coach Mary Jo Firnbach said. ‘But it’s something we expect and also something we can’t control. We just keep going to the warm weather and come back and do our best to simulate the outdoor game.’

This weekend Syracuse finally returns to action in Murfreesboro, Tenn., at the Breast Cancer Strikeout Classic beginning with a contest against host Middle Tennessee State Saturday at 1 p.m.

Also on Saturday, the Orange will take on Loyola-Chicago and will face Lipscomb and Tennessee-Martin on Sunday.

At the Kajikawa Classic two weeks ago, the Orange took an extremely inexperienced squad cross country to face three ranked teams and two other former playoff teams.

Sophomore outfielder Chanel Roehner thinks the two-week hiatus from game action is not the worst thing in the world.

‘It’s almost better for us,’ said Roehner, who batted .250 with a home run in the first five games. ‘After the tournament, we realized we need to work on some things for the next two weeks.’

One of those things is likely team batting. In five games at Arizona, the Orange scored a total of seven runs and batted a combined .185.

‘You have to put things in perspective,’ Firnbach said. ‘We have nine freshmen and only five returning players, and we’re going to play top 10 programs. It is what it is, and we have to respond.’

The Syracuse winter climate makes it difficult for the team after coming back from warm-weather destinations against West Coast teams that have the advantage of year-round practice outdoors.

Actually, the Orange received a blast of Syracuse-like weather before they even made it back from Arizona to the 315 area code. The team was stranded during a layover in Pittsburgh and had to spend the night in the city before returning home in two waves.

Now that Syracuse is home, it has been biding the time to its next game with intra-squad scrimmages. With a 15-player roster, it is even harder for the Orange to simulate game play. Erin Downey is exclusively a pitcher, and outfielder Tonye McCorkle is suffering from mononucleosis, so that leaves Syracuse to make two teams with 13 players.

For this reason, Firnbach is still learning about her young team.

‘We have a lot of talent,’ she said. ‘It’s just a matter of getting that all put together in the right areas. I’m looking for some consistency from them this weekend.’

Not that the gloomy weather and indoor practices are keeping the Orange down.

‘The turf is more fun to slide on,’ Roehner said. ‘For the first time in Arizona we wore our cleats on real dirt, and it was like the most amazing thing, but we were tripping all over the place.’

Kim’s swing

First baseman Heather Kim perhaps provided the most pleasant surprise of the first weekend.

Kim hit .385 and drove in three throughout the five-game tournament. In her first collegiate at-bat, she knocked in two with a double in the first inning against Arizona State to momentarily put the Orange ahead.

‘I was definitely very nervous to start,’ Kim said. ‘In my first at-bat, I came up with runners on base and something just clicked. It’s the same thing I’ve been doing since I was 10 years old, and it just felt right.’

Kim hit .659 as a senior at Fairview High School in Boulder, Colo., with 10 steals. She was expected to split time at first base with another freshman, Jordan Rosen, but that may not be the case any longer.

‘(Heather) held her own,’ Firnbach said. ‘There’s nothing more you can ask of a freshman coming in especially against that kind of competition.’

Published on February 23, 2006 at 12:00 pm