The 28-player squad, which was named earlier this week, is preparing to mount a challenge in the championship division of the Farah Palmer Cup.
With the competition split into two divisions, Otago joins Tasman, Hawke's Bay, Bay of Plenty and North Harbour in the championship.
It will play each of those teams once and have crossover games with premiership teams Canterbury and Wellington.
The top three sides in the championship advance to the playoffs.
From there the first-placed team advances to the final and the second and third teams play a semifinal.
The winning team then gains direct promotion to the premiership.
The Spirit has struggled against the top teams in recent years and new coach Kane Jury said it was a great concept.
''Absolutely and I think that's the big one,'' he said about having more competitive games.
''If we're going to keep developing the game in New Zealand, we need to get women to play games and not get these big scores against them every week.
''Now we actually get to be competitive and I think they've all got the chance to win something as well and I think that's very realistic.
''If you were to be honest, in the last few years, were we competitive enough to win the premiership? No, probably not.
''But now we've got our eyes firmly set on winning the championship, and that's very realistic.''
Despite that, the team had not spoken much about the results it hoped to achieve this season.
Jury said players had a lot to work on and one thing he hoped to do was gain a greater connection to the team's past.
Last week that involved players contacting a former Spirit player each and telling their stories back to the group.
Jury was happy with the squad and felt it could be competitive, provided it could create a strong platform at set-piece.
It had some strong ball-running front-rowers, alongside good aerial locks.
There was strength in the loose forwards, in particular abrasive flanker Angie Sisifa and Georgia Mason, alongside some exciting backs.
Jury said it was in the tight five that the squad was most inexperienced and that would be a focus.
There it had plenty of positive and aggressive players, but some had switched from different positions with their clubs to play in the front row for the Spirit.
That meant things such as scrum technique and lineout lifting technique would be important.
The team would have pre-season runs against Canterbury and Tasman in Christchurch this weekend.
It would have 40 minutes of ''scenarios'' against each in the morning, before playing 30 minute games against each in the afternoon.
The scenarios involved doing things such as attacking for 10 minutes, then defending for 10 minutes to work on various things against a live opponent.
From there it would look ahead to its first game, against Canterbury, on September 3 in Christchurch.
