Melinda Fischer is happy her Redbird softball team is ready to get back to work after 12 days off.
The Illinois State softball team plays Friday at the State Farm National Invitational Championship in Moline, Ill. The NIC will consist of pool play on Friday and the first session on Saturday and then will begin a single-elimination tournament on Saturday evening.
The Birds have the potential to play 10 Division I opponents, starting at 5 p.m. Friday against Iowa. Fischer likes what the NIC has to offer her team, but is not quite sure if the Redbirds will be up to the challenge.
I like the format with pool play, because how you finish in your pool means something, how you finish in pool play will be your seed for bracket play, Fischer said. I am not sure we are ready for it because of all the new faces, but I think we are ready to see what we can do in this type of format.
The Redbirds will be in Pool B of the three pool invitational. Pool B includes a list of very familiar foes for the Birds. Iowa and Western Illinois are both teams from the Birds NCAA Regional in the spring, while Illinois Central College was one of the teams in the Redbird Fall Tournament two weekends ago.
The rest of the NIC field is made up of Iowa State, Valparaiso, Wisconsin- Green Bay and conference rival Bradley in Pool A, while Pool C includes Missouri-St. Louis, IUPUI, Kirkwood Community College, Northern Illinois, and Wisconsin.
The Redbirds have won the NIC once before in 1995.
