Despite having a great first inning, it wasn’t enough to help the softball team win its first conference game losing, 8-1 against Long Beach Tuesday.

This loss leaves the team with an overall record of 1-8.

The softball team will play today at home against East L.A. at 3 p.m.

The team will then travel to face off against Cerritos College Tuesday at 3 p.m.

The Vikings came into the game with a 9-0 record, hoping to sweep EC for another win.

Both teams started off strong with one run in the first inning.

The Warriors had high hopes that they could end the Vikings’ perfect season and improve their own.

However, the Warriors were unable to score and Long Beach began dominating the game with two home runs by the third inning.

“We all had the jitters; it was our first real game,” shortstop Stephanie Koss said. “I thought we did a pretty good job overall.”

Starting pitcher Cassie McMillian said if she would have been more focused she could have done better defensively.

Still, she remains confident about what will happen during today’s game.

This season the team has had to deal with many setbacks, such as having only 10 players, and no returning players.

This is the first time in four years that there has been no returning players on the softball team.

“We had some ineligible players along with many who needed to work and didn’t have the spare time,” coach Susie Calderon said.

Among the new players there are a few players who know very liitle about the game, Calderon said.

“Having no retuning players hurts our team a bit, but overall this team communicates a lot better then any team I’ve coached before,” Calderon said.

However, mental errors have played a big part in all its games.

“They need to remember the basics,” Calderon said.

Despite not having a great record so far, the team remains positive about its upcoming games.

With all the losses, the team has managed to slowly progress and to fix the mental errors that are holding them back from winning.

“Each game, we’re improving and we are making fewer mistakes, but the mental mistakes get us every time,” assistant coach Randi Berg said.

The Warriors started off strong but couldn’t stay focused and ended up not scoring for the remainder of the game.

Despite losing this game, the team keeps a good attitude that it will do well this season.

“I’m confident we will improve a lot by the next couple of games,” McMillian said. “We have a good team; We just need to play more games together.”

Aware of the difficult level of competition in the South Coast Conference, the team is taking every game as serious as the one before, Calderon said.

“The teams (in our conference) every year seem to be getting stronger and more challenging,” Calderon said “They have great players every year.”

With the season just starting the softball team knows that it has to stay injury free and work hard to limit mental lapses, Calderon said.

“This will be a tough year for us; Every game will be challenging,” Calderon said. “We need to stay strong,”

“Every team we face we look at them as if they are the best team in the conference,” Berg said.