Yesterday, I took a look at the Boise State Broncos softball team, a team which will be going through a likely difficult transition year after losing six of their seven best hitters in the offseason. Today, it’s time for the team that went through nearly the exact same thing last season that the Broncos will now: the reigning conference caboose, the Colorado State Rams.
Throughout their time in the Mountain West, the Rams have usually fallen into the middle of the pack in terms of softball performance,
totalling two conference titles over the last 26 years. Entering 2025, the Rams had been riding a two-year high where they won a combined 57 games, falling to Nevada in the first round of the conference tournament both years.
After 2024, however, the Rams had lost six of their top eight hitters to graduation, a list that included two-way stars Sydney Hornbuckle and Danielle Serna, who also served as the Rams’ two best pitchers in addition to their respective hitting prowesses.
The result was a patchwork lineup of mostly freshman assembled by longtime Rams softball coach Jen Fisher. The Rams were predicted to finish 6th in the conference by the preseason coaches poll, one spot behind eventual conference champion Nevada. Unfortunately for Rams fans, they were not able to see a jump from prediction to reality like the Wolf Pack did. Instead, what they saw was the equivalent of a nuclear meltdown.
The Rams finished an abysmal 16-32 in 2025, just 6-16 in conference, both of which were last in the conference. Name any stat and the Rams were almost certainly in the bottom three of the conference every time. Namely, the Rams had a team ERA of an atrocious 6.61, which ranked 286th out of 300 Division 1 teams.
Again, this was a team composed of mostly freshmen and sophomores, so growing pains are to be expected, but such a monumental implosion from the years prior was certainly an unwelcome surprise. The 2026 Rams are, without a doubt, hoping to avoid the same fate with another year of experience.
Schedule
The Rams will open up their season at the NorCal Kickoff invitational hosted by Sacramento State, from February 6-8. Here, they will face five California schools: Cal Poly, Saint Mary’s, San Diego, UC Davis, and wrap up the event against hosts Sacramento State. None of these schools made the tournament last year, with the best opponents from last year being Saint Mary’s and Sac State, who each lost 23 games last year (SMC had one more win than SAC, 28-27). If the Rams want to prove that they are improved from last year, this matchup against five teams at or below their skill level is their first great opportunity.
Staying in California, the Rams will next head to the San Diego Tournament, jointly hosted by San Diego and UC San Diego. Here, they will face Utah Tech, San Diego, Farleigh Dickinson, and UC San Diego in San Diego, along with a game against UCSD at their home in La Jolla. Again, none of these teams made the tournament last year, and this time, none even reached a .500 record (FDU had the best record at 24-26). The Rams certainly scheduled in order to ease their way into the season this year.
Next, the Rams head to a place they will soon be quite familiar with: San Marcos, Texas, home of future Pac-12 mate Texas State. Here, at the River State Classic, they will face off against host Texas State to bookend the tournament, along with games against Oklahoma State, Kansas City, and Brown.
Only Oklahoma State made the tournament last year, and three of the four teams finished with similar records (TXST 34-19, OKST 35-20, BRWN 33-17). The fourth, Kansas City, was quite literally a bottom 5 team in the country with a 5-43 record. If the Rams cannot beat the Roos, then all hope will be totally lost. The best team out of the five is decidedly Oklahoma State, as the Cowgirls enter the season as the preseason #20 team in the country.
The final two MTEs are both being held in the comfort of Fort Collins. First, at the Colorado Classic, the Rams will play host to Northern Colorado and Creighton in two games apiece. Each of these teams were their conference runnerups in 2025, Creighton falling to UConn in the Big East Championship, while Northern Colorado, despite losing 11 more games than they won, went on a magical run in the Big Sky Championship before falling to top-seeded Idaho State.
Finally, the Rams will host Drake, Kansas City (again), South Dakota twice, and South Dakota State in the Rams Invitational. The best of these teams is South Dakota, who fell to Omaha in the Summit League Championship winner-takes-all game a year ago.
After this, the Rams will play in one final non-conference game at home against Saint Mary’s once again. For conference play, the Rams have four away series, against San Diego State, UNLV, Fresno State, and Utah State. They have five home series, against New Mexico, Boise State, San Jose State, Nevada, and Grand Canyon.
This schedule means the Rams have a 2-2 split of home and away series against the conference’s top contenders. The nonconference schedule indicates that the Rams are taking more time to ease into the season than they did last year, which will hopefully lead to more than 10 wins before conference play.
Hitting Core
The good thing about going 16-32 is that power conference schools don’t want to take your top performers. The bad thing is that going 16-32 means that there weren’t really any performances good enough to warrant taking.
Colorado State had the second-worst batting average in the Mountain West in 2025, hitting a dismal .271 on the year, only exceeding the mark of San Jose State (.260). The Rams were also last in the conference in RBIs, runs scored, and home runs.
Only two Ram hitters—Brooke Bohlender and Kaylynn English—hit above .300 on the season. Bohlender has now graduated from CSU, while English is returning for her junior season. The most RBIs on the season went to Autumn Rutherford with 24. The now-sophomore only hit .291, but her timely hitting was what kept the Rams in most of the games they played. Now-junior Jailey Wilson took the most free trips to first (23) while hitting .276.
One other notable player from 2025 was now-sophomore Kyra Smith. Smith may have only hit .284 during her first season in the green and gold, but she hit a team-high home run tally of 4 in just 88 total at-bats. With a full year under her belt, Smith looks to be right up with English as the future of the program.
The Rams didn’t gain any help from the transfer portal in their hitting core, leaving any potential additions to the core being CSU’s four freshmen. Most notable of these is Olivia Schmidt, who is both a pitcher and infielder, a fact which immediately invokes memories of their successful days of not-so-long ago.
Pitching Core
Even more crucial for the Rams to get right this season is their pitching staff, which, as mentioned before, was one of the absolute worst units in the country.
The Rams’ best pitcher, Reagan Wick, is returning for her junior season. In her sophomore season, Wick led the team with an ERA of 4.86, totalling a 9-15 record. All due respect to Wick, but a 4.86 ERA being a team’s best across extended periods of time is very bad. Giselle Bentley was the Rams’ only other starter for most of the season, and her ERA across 100.2 was an eye-popping 7.93.
The freshmen additions don’t invoke too much excitement for this unit in the immediate future aside from Schmidt and possibly Liliana Russo, but the major addition to the rotation this season comes in the form of Iowa transfer Andrea Jaskowiak.
Jaskowiak had a 3.34 ERA during her 14.2 innings in her freshman season for Iowa, but she only made three appearances in 2025 for a total of 3.2 innings, where she gave up 10 hits, 3 home runs, 15 runs, and an ERA of 24.82. Jaskowiak made the decision to transfer after the season, and now finds herself in Fort Collins. Perhaps the change of scenery can do some good for Jaskowiak, but it really is hard to overlook an ERA nearly topping 25, even in such a short sample size.
Overall, it really is hard to judge the Rams’ pitching staff. I expect Wick to improve, and I don’t anticipate Jaskowiak to match her ERA from her sophomore season, so it could be a good fit for her to be the alternate starter. I have doubts that two mediocre-to-good starters will be enough to see the Rams return to contending status over the course of the 2026 season, but it would certainly be better than last year’s rotation, that’s for sure.
Prediction
2025 Result: 16-32 (6-16 MWC), Regular Season: 9th, Missed Conference and NCAA Tournaments
2026 Prediction: 22-28 (7-18 MWC), Miss Conference and NCAA Tournaments
I want to see the potential for improvement in the Rams’ roster this season, but I just don’t. I don’t think they have done enough in their roster moves to overcome just how much of an implosion they suffered last season.
The one bright spot I can see that the Rams have is their absolutely pitiful schedule. With only one team they face having made it to the NCAA Tournament last year, being a power conference team, or being ranked this year, CSU’s nonconference slate features a who’s who of teams that put the “mid” in mid-major.
I can easily see the Rams winning a far greater number of games than even what I have predicted here in the nonconference, such is how weak their schedule is. In my mind, though, their winning will wind down once they enter conference play, as the 2026 Mountain West is a gauntlet that I don’t believe the Rams are prepared for.
I would welcome being wrong with open arms, but I just don’t see success for the Rams this year, sadly.
Next up will be the preview for the Fresno State Bulldogs, which will drop tomorrow at 8 a.m PST.
