Our funding need for the rest of year is $40,000.

As our team works hard toward achieving our ultimate goal of making it back to the NCAA Tournament, we are challenged by the long and cold winters here in Detroit. The cold and snow make it necessary for us to practice indoors. Although we are fortunate enough to have located indoor facilities, they come at a steep cost. The majority of our fundraising money raised during the fall semester goes toward the cost of these facilities but it is insufficient to cover the entire cost. Along with practicing indoors, we are also need to travel to warmer areas at the start of our season. The transportation, hotels and meals for these trips have significant expenses for which we must budget.

We face schools in Florida, Louisiana, Arizona, Michigan and throughout the Midwest and we need funding to help offset travel expenses because we do have to travel so often. We need to fly to the out-of-state games and it is always expensive, especially when we take the whole team, which has a roster of about 25 women and coaches.

In addition to travel costs, we also need to update our equipment. Most of our equipment is over 5 years old. We need to replace or need upgrades to our pitching machine, softballs, protective netting, bats and drill supplies.

Detroit Mercy Softball is looking forward to the 2019-20 year after coming off a very successful season! The 2018-19 season was a record-breaking and trophy-raising season for Titan softball, which won its first Horizon League Championship since 1992 and advanced to the program's first NCAA Tournament berth in school history during the 2019 campaign. It was Detroit Mercy's fifth Horizon League title overall (1987, 1988, 1989, 1992, 2019).

We won 31 games in 2019 under retired head coach John Conway. We also landed a conference-high 14 student-athletes on the National Fastpitch Coaches Association (NFCA) All-America Scholar Athlete award list. These 14 players achieved a 3.5 grade point average (GPA) or better during the 2018-19 academic year.

We have such a great group of young women representing Detroit Mercy on the field and in the classroom. We are dedicated to continuing to provide our student athletes with the best collegiate experience possible but we need your help.

We appreciate all that you do for our program and we look forward to seeing you soon.

International residents can make an online gift by going to https://community.udmercy.edu/donate, selecting Other and typing in the crowdfunding project.