Although the Lady Saints lost their Tidewater Conference of Independent Schools championship game Friday, head coach Brittany Wilkins believes her girls can improve with teamwork and is very proud of how they played so far this season.

“We put in a lot of hours and we have very few days off,” Wilkins said. “We put in a lot of hard work.”

Wilkins is an NSA alum and former softball player. After she graduated from Boston College, she came back to Nansemond-Suffolk as an assistant. The year after that, she became the head coach and has been coaching the Lady Saints for three years.

Wilkins realizes that softball is a mental game and prepares herself by studying statistics and any information she can get to give her team a mental edge. The night beforehand, she thinks of a strategy for the upcoming game and compares her team’s stats with the opposing team’s.

Before every game, Wilkins has a message for her team.

“I remind them to keep it simple,” she said. “It’s a game, and it should be fun. The simpler you keep it, the better off you are.”

After the game, she recognizes the standout players and asks them if they want the good news or the bad news.

A major point in the Lady Saints’ season was when they beat Kenston Forest. Kenston Forest was a No. 1 ranked school in the state, and the last time they played Kenston Forest, they lost.

“This game was so important because, in the seventh inning, it was the first time I had seen the team playing together. It was back and forth, but we were able to pull it out,” she said.

Wilkins has plenty of time left to coach. She said she is still young, but she loves mentoring and teaching the girls. She is inspired by seeing their potential and how they grow. But she also realizes that having tremendous amount of potential doesn’t necessarily translate to wins.

“We need to get everyone to play as a cohesive unit,” she said. “That’s what separated us from Greenbrier in the championship game.”

Wilkinson said she told the girls to relax and have fun before the championship game, as always.

“At that point, there was nothing physically left that they could do,” she said. “It was a mental game from then on.”

It was after the game that she reiterated that struggling to play together would make or break their season. But Wilkins is ready for the next challenge as she prepares her team for the state tournament.

“We have states coming up this week, and I am very focused on that,” she said.