Stroll down alumni drive and listen for a second. Beyond the whistling wind, the rumble of traffic and the chirping of the birds, you might here a familiar but forgotten sound. Hear it?Yes, the ping of the bat is back on the diamond on the UK Softball Complex as the Kentucky softball team gears up for the 2010 season.I had a chance to stop by the field Wednesday afternoon for an upcoming preview and video, but I thought I’d give a quick update on the team following my interviews.The Cats have been practicing since mid-January in anticipation for its Feb. 11 opener vs. Arizona State in the Kajikawa Classis in Tempe, Ariz. “It’s gone well,” head coach Rachel Lawson said of the first few weeks of practice. “The team looks good. We had a great offseason where everybody is very strong. I’m excited to play in a couple of weeks.”The team looks good, in part, because it returns just about every piece of the record-setting puzzle from a year ago. Virtually the entire team returns from the school’s first NCAA Tournament appearance, setting the stage for possibly another historic year.The return of the Cats’ key cogs has allowed Lawson to basically pick right back up where she left off with the team at the end of last year’s NCAA Regional run, one in which UK totaled 34 victories, the second most in school history.”Because we return just about every player – we only have three freshmen – we’re kind of expanding what we’re doing in terms of our offensive strategy and we’re still getting into the swing of things defensively to get faster,” Lawson said.The Cats already have an added advantage over last year in that they’re already outside. Because of the unseasonably nasty weather last season, UK was forced indoors at Nutter Field House all of last preseason. The first time the Cats saw the dirt was at their season-opening tournament game.This year they’ve already played outside twice with a few weeks still to spare.”It’s been important because everything is a lot harder outside than it is inside,” Lawson said. “Inside you feel very fast. When you get outside in the elements where it’s windy and a little bit colder, things just move a little bit slower, so it’s important that we can step outside.”I had a chance to talk to the players about finally achieving what they’ve wanted to do since the program’s inception in 1997. Now that they’ve finally achieved some success and taken a significant step forward, there is a different sense of confidence that they’ve never felt before. Whereas before they were talking about doing something special, now they’ve done it. Now they know they can do it again.”We’ve seen what the possibilities are,” said senior shortstop Molly Johnson, the team’s leader and recent honoree on the Amateur Softball Association of American’s preseason watch list. “Last year I think we did more than anybody expected. We still may surprise people even though we gave them a glimpse last year.”Lawson believes that firsthand glimpse of success could be a double-edge sword in 2010. For one, it presents a sense of belief that even bigger things are possible this year, as Johnson mentioned, but the Cats must now also face the daunting task of actually living up to high expectations for the first time in program history.”It’s different,” Lawson said. “Last year everything was so new that every time we stepped on the field something really exciting was going to happen. This year is a completely different ballclub because they believe they can get it done and they don’t have any doubts. With that is the added pressure of actually going out there and living up to their own expectations.”I’ll have much, much more on this later in a future preview story for the 2010 season. Keep an eye on the blog for that and upcoming video on the UK softball team in the coming weeks. Also, I hope to get out to Cliff Hagan Stadium in the coming days and do something similar for the 2010 baseball season.