A Super Talk, Mississippi Media Production.

Normally we do this all at once, but this year because football was kind enough to give us two bye weeks.

We have two byweek blitzes.

Let's go to the diamond.

Let's go to the spring sports.

Let's talk softball with Coach Samantha Ricketts and coach six seasons in Starkville now.

Technically it's only five seasons in Starkville because you had the whole COVID thing your first year.

When you think about building a program and getting a program where you want it to be,

where year in and year out, we can contend for championships here.

It would be the message.

How close do you feel as you enter this season,

you've gotten your program to where you want it to be? Yeah, I think we're really close. I think

we're getting in the right athletes, which is the biggest part of taking over a program, is the

recruiting and bringing in high-quality players that are also good people that you can build a culture around.

I think that's something that we've been working towards and building year-in and year out.

I think a big piece of the last, especially the last couple years, has been just all of the changes in the NCAA

and navigating those changes along with building the program as the transfer portal rules change and

NIL becomes a factor. It really changes maybe what our plan was five or six years ago.

So I think just navigating the changes in different spaces, getting in the right people,

same goes with the right staff, having the facilities like we have now. I think it really just

sets us up well to compete on the

national level like we expect ourselves to.

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