Wichita State baseball, softball focus on MVC while AAC future awaits

Wichita State’s spring sports coaches are in the delicate position of living in the old and the new worlds.

Baseball, softball, golf, tennis and track are competing in the Missouri Valley Conference, all with championships still to be decided, while looking to membership in the American Athletic Conference in 2017-18. The Shockers accepted an invitation to the American on Friday and will officially join on July 1.

“We’re still trying to compete in the Valley and the Valley’s been great to Wichita State through the years,” baseball coach Todd Butler said.

So with all due respect to MVC pennant races and tournaments to come, Shockers coaches are excited, curious and energized by the possibilities of the move to the American. They’re ready — or trying to get ready — for more sun, longer trips, bigger cities and tougher tests.

“We’re going to focus on the present and leaving our mark on the Valley,” softball coach Kristi Bredbenner said. “There’s no better way to leave than trying to win.”

The Shockers play at Kansas on Tuesday in baseball and softball.

The baseball Shockers (16-15) are trying to win in Lawrence for the first time since 2012. The softball Shockers (22-14) won last season’s meeting against the Jayhawks 6-1.

All WSU programs are looking at schedules and budgets and figuring out how to navigate at conference that stretches to Connecticut and Florida. Baseball and softball will catch the brunt of that mileage and with travel parties of around 30 people flying commercial to many conference series.

Since Tulsa and SMU don’t play baseball, the Shockers now belong to a conference where its closest rivals (Houston and Memphis) are roughly 600 miles away, comparable to its farthest MVC rival (612 miles to Evansville). While Tulsa plays softball, SMU does not.

Butler expects to play a 24-game AAC schedule with four three-game series at home and four on the road. The addition of a conference weekend (seven in the MVC) means he must cancel or adjust some non-conference series scheduled for 2018.

The conference tournament has been held in all four seasons of the AAC’s existence at Spectrum Field in Clearwater, Fla., home of the Philadelphia Phillies spring training. Other than every-other-year trips to Connecticut and Cincinnati, the Shockers are headed in the general direction of sunny spring weather.

“We’ll most likely be flying for every weekend on the road,” he said. “We’re moving to warmer climates, which should help in recruiting.”

Bredbenner can sell the same weather reports. While the MVC is enjoying a strong season — with five top-100 RPI teams — she looks at five NCAA at-large bids over the past three seasons and is excited.

“For softball, it’s a pretty awesome move,” she said. “Pretty routinely, it’s getting two or three teams in (an NCAA regional).”

Bredbenner’s budget normally allows for two flights a season. This season, those trips are a tournament in Arizona in February and an upcoming MVC series at Loyola in Chicago. Next spring, the Shockers are scheduled to fly to a tournament at Auburn and will add at least two flights to conference series.

Tulsa coaches warned her that prices of flights and hotels rise if the schedule takes a team to Florida during spring break. She is checking airline and travel websites to find the best routes and the best prices for those trips.

“We haven’t flown three times, I don’t think, since I’ve been here,” she said. “It’s a pretty significant change in our budget. ”

With eight softball schools, the AAC schedule will consist of seven three-game series. While the MVC plays a Saturday doubleheader, the American plays single games on Friday, Saturday and Sunday for its weekend series. Bredbenner likes the three-day schedule because helps a team use fresh pitchers.

“It’s going to present some academic challenges for our kids, because right now we barely miss Thursdays,” she said. “We usually leave when classes are over on Friday and we miss very little. Now we’re going to be traveling on those Thursdays.”

Bredbenner is also adjusting her schedule. She held off scheduling Tulsa — a traditional mid-week opponent — in anticipation of this move. Now she needs more mid-week opponents nearby and will play at Nebraska and Creighton and play host to Nebraska-Omaha next season. The MVC plays nine series, which leaves Bredbenner with an open weekend to fill in 2018.

“We all have tons and tons of questions,” she said. “There’s a lot of logistical sides of it that we’re all going to have to get used to.”

This story was originally published April 10, 2017 at 5:08 PM with the headline "Wichita State baseball, softball focus on MVC while AAC future awaits."