View from the cheap seats

A weekly perspective on sports

Casey Krautkramer Reporter The Record-Review

Edgar softball players have no reason to hang their heads after seeing their magical 2022 season end at the hands of Barneveld on Friday morning at the WIAA Division 5 state tournament in Madison. The future is certainly bright for the Wildcats.

The Wildcats softball team provided its school’s faithful sports fans with plenty of excitement this spring, even though this season didn’t culminate with the squad winning a state title. Edgar’s softball team did advance to the state tournament this year for the firs time in program history. Hopefully this season was only the start of even better things to come in the future.

Edgar’s softball team has a great chance to play in the state tournament for at least two more seasons, and have a shot at winning the school’s first softball state championship, because ace pitcher Makayla Wirkus still has two more years remaining in her outstanding high school athletic career.

I do agree with Edgar co-head softball coach Kevin Brown, however, that theres’s no guarantee the Wildcats softball team will advance to the state tournament again next season even though they are only losing one senior starting player, centerfielder Karlin Lipinski, to graduation. Hopefully Edgar’s softball players remain healthy throughout next season, but injuries can sometimes plague high school sports teams.

There’s also no way of knowing what teams will be in the Edgar softball team’s sectional playoff next season. For example, there’s a chance this year’s WIAA Division 5 state champion, Wisconsin Rapids Assumption, could be placed in the same sectional bracket as Edgar is in 2023.

Edgar’s softball team played great in 2022, but the Wildcats still couldn’t quite beat the Assumption Royals during the regular season. Edgar lost a home doubleheader to Assumption on April 28 by scores of 11-1 and 2-1.

It’s tough for the Wildcats to win both games in a doubleheader, because their ace Wirkus can only pitch in one game. Wirkus pitched all seven innings in the team’s playoff games this season.

The doubleheader nightcap better represented what a future playoff game could look like between the Wildcats and Royals. Both teams’ ace pitchers, Wirkus of Edgar and junior Ava Schill of Assumption, battled against each other in a highly-contested game. The Wildcats led until the end, when the Royals plated two runs to win the game. Wirkus struck out 15 Assumption batters and Schill had nine strikeouts.

It’s crazy to think Assumption’s softball squad won the state championship this season on the same day the Assumption girls soccer team won the sectional title to advance to state. How does Assumption have so many talented girl athletes to be able to have two girls state tournament teams in one spring sports season?