DURHAM, N.C. – Carolina Blaze head coach Kara Dill spoke following Wednesday’s home loss to the Chicago Bandits, July 15, 2026. The following is a full transcript of the press conference with Charles Mays of Southeastern Softball Wire.
Mays: Coach, to get right to it: tonight felt like a rollercoaster. You get back home and the offense finally clicks. Take me through the emotions of this game.
Dill: Yeah. I think when you look at our last stretch, we’d been on the road 16 days. We’re losing those games by one run. I thought in the last two games, our offense had put together much better quality at-bats, even though the outcomes weren’t there. So it’s just a matter of time before we started scoring runs again. So I think that’s what you saw today. It wasn’t a flip of the switch. It really was a build in the last couple of games. And we’re trying to move the lineup around and get people some different pitches and some different looks. So I thought that was great. Our pitching staff has been great all year. Our defense has been great all year. They looked a little bit like a step slow today. And I think if they’re who we’ve normally been, which is, it’s normal to have maybe an off day. But if they’re who they normally are, we come away with a win. But I think overall, much better. The offense had been in a little bit of a struggle there for a bit, so it was good to see them come through today.
Mays: How does it feel on a day like today, where the pitching has been a strong point for this team all season long and you’ve been waiting on the offense to break through, and then that happens and then the pitching goes left? It just seems like…
Dill: Yeah. It’s like, man, when we put it all together on the same day, we’re gonna be really tough to beat. And it’s just not going our way right now with that. But it’s not a lack of effort. It’s not a lack of talent. It’s not a lack of who we have on the roster or anything like that. But that’s exactly the conversation. And the perspective is, as soon as one thing went, then we lost the other thing. So, man, when we put those together, we’re gonna be tough to beat.
Mays: How much did this team miss Kayla Kowalik in the lineup, speaking either on-field or off? What does she bring to this team that may have given you all a better edge over these last couple weeks?
Dill: Yeah. I think, looking at her as a player specifically and what she’s able to bring, we would be able to catch her a little bit. She’s very comfortable with the pitchers. They are very comfortable with her. Offensively, she is an extremely tough out. So I think that gives our lineup one extra bat. And she can hit for power, she can hit for average. She’s had a lot of success in this league. Winning the All-Star Cup last year is no surprise to those of us who know her and her on-field skills. And then I think she just gives you an edge mentally too. She’s just so physically tough. She’s very resilient. She’s that spark that you have on your offense. It doesn’t always look pretty when she’s doing things, but she just gets the job done. And she’s been staying in it. She kind of put her coaching hat back on, and she’s been keeping charts for us and talking with hitters and talking with our coaches and doing everything that she can to stay in it. But I think you lose the character of her, the resiliency of her, the toughness of her, as well as what she’s able to produce on-field for us.
Mays: Tonight, would you say this Bandits lineup has been probably the toughest you all have faced all year? Specifically Karlyn Pickens. I feel like they were dialed in right from the beginning. And also on Pickens, I noticed she was caught by Jordyn Rudd-Lee tonight. Was that kind of unusual for her, with Atwood out of the lineup?
Dill: So we noticed that too. Their offense is one of the best in the league for a reason. They were hitting her hard from the get-go. I mean, they were still singles. I think we maybe had two extra-base hits given up. Mostly singles, but hitting it harder the first time through than most people have with Karlyn. So they were prepared for her, they were ready for her. That offense has been doing a great job. Jordyn has been catching her in bullpen. She’s been catching her fairly often, so we were comfortable putting Jordyn back there. Reese being at the ESPYS tonight, getting to experience that, which is a really cool thing for her and her Texas team. So I don’t think we skipped a beat without Reese back there. I think Jordyn did a great job for us. But yeah, they were definitely prepared. Definitely one of the best offenses that we’ve faced.
Mays: Aubrey Leach, that bottom-of-the-seventh solo home run. How big was it for her to come through at a big moment like that? I know she’s been trying to get through it as well.
Dill: Yeah. I think the cool thing about Aubrey is she is very much a professional player. She’s not emotional. She does not ride the highs and the lows. She has good perspective on things. She was just getting unlucky, and she made a comment the other day. She got doubled off. We had bases loaded, and she got doubled off, and she’s like, “That’s the second time in my career I’ve gotten doubled off.” When you hear something like that, you’re like, “Holy cow, the amount of games that she’s played.” She’s like, “I just have bad luck right now.” And that perspective just keeps her coming back and working hard and not losing her identity, not trying to do something out of the norm, just understanding that it’s gonna come back around to her. And I watched her today watch some film during our optional BP, and watching how Sandercock had beat her in the past. And she had beat her a lot on the drop in. And so it was really cool to see Aubrey come through with a home run on the drop in in that moment.
Mays: And last thing. Mathematically, realistically, with tonight’s loss, you all’s postseason hopes are now done. When you look back on this season, I know you haven’t had time yet, but when you get the chance to and just think about how it started and how everything just felt like it came to a wall you couldn’t push through. All these losses have been by one, two, walkoffs. How is that something you can fathom in your mind, to think we were that close?
Dill: Yeah. I mean, I think that is the perspective. You look at our organization last year compared to this year, and we were right there with almost every game that we’ve played. A lot of the games that we dropped were one run, two runs, something like that. You’re bound to have an off day here and there. But it is a huge jump from what we were last year. So I think when you can look at the perspective of that, it’s like we’re making strides. We started out hot, so if you take the small of it, if our season’s a little bit longer, do we come back out of the swing? Probably. But coming to a halt kind of right in the middle, now at this point it’s like we have nothing to lose. Just keep enjoying being a professional and playing with your teammates and getting to do this for the next couple of days is hopefully the mindset that they continue to work through.
Mays: On that last part, I know you said if the season would’ve been a little longer, maybe you could’ve broken out of this, turned some things around. I know 25 games is what the AUSL’s doing. I’m sure down the road there may be more, but do you, as a coach and as a team, wish the season was longer? Because you go through these ups and downs, it’s natural. And then some people may start down, like you saw the Volts, and now they’re… if you just had a little more time, how do you think about things like that?
Dill: Yeah, absolutely. And we’re super grateful for where the league is and the barriers that it’s breaking and the opportunities that we’re getting. And then moving forward, being able to have a little bit of a longer season, some more games, you probably swing back out of it. You look at MLB or you look at baseball and their season is super long, so they have some… maybe a month. Sometimes hitters go 0-for a month, or even in the college game, hitters will go 0-fer and then they come right back out of it in the next month. But it’s sort of changing that mindset while we have what we have and just working within what we have, and being able to do that a little bit quicker than they’re used to in the college game.
