Softball will play against Sachse High School at 10:45 a.m. and Little Elm on 2:45 p.m on Feb. 16 for the Fourney tournament at Fourney, TX.

“Here at Hebron, we’ve been pretty successful,” head coach Jason Gwyn said. “I’ve been here for seven years, and we’ve made playoffs in all but two, so success in the program is something normal. I am a little bit spoiled this year. Most of these kids are three-year varsity starters. We’ve done a lot more actual live-game scrimmaging.”

Gwyn has every starter from last year’s team return, so preparation for this season has been a little different in the fact that there has been less actual teaching and more of game preparation.

“[We’re] not really changing anything training-wise,” Gwyn said. “It’s more of asking them ‘What do you want to get out of this season?’ and ‘What do you want your last season to be like?’ Training wise, I think we have done pretty well in the past. It’s been successful. Now it’s just a mental mindset of where they are at now and where they want to be at the end of the season.”

Gwyn said the team’s hitting, pitching and catching have been outstanding in the past couple of years, so they are a well-rounded team, but the team members tend to be hard on themselves when things do not go the right way.

“We tend to be our own worst enemy sometimes,” Gwyn said. “For us, it’s a snowball effect. When we are rolling, it’s good, but when one thing happens, it snowballs into the next. I really challenged them this year to really take care of the little things because for the talent and experience we have, the difference between good and great this year is going to be the little things and how well they take care of them. If they care of those, then that snowball effect takes care of itself.”

Senior Cecily Thompson said she expects the team to go far into playoffs with the experience that the team has, and she wants her team to be district champions for the first time in school history for her senior year.

“This season I expect our team to be the best it has been in the past four years considering we have eight seniors and an abundance of experience on our varsity team,” Thompson said. “Although I’m sad it’s my last season, softball has brought me so many amazing memories and life lessons. I really hope we can finish this last season strong.”

The Fourney tournament consists of five games against Centennial, Wylie East, Forney, Sachse and Little Elm.

“I know we are facing teams that have elite level pitching, so I think this weekend will be a good measuring stick in terms of where our offense is really at,” Gwyn said.