with the co-op, Clement and ….
with the co-op, Clement and her fellow seniors, Colby High’s Peavey and Brooklyn Filtzkowski, are hoping to leave the program in a better place for next season.
All the seniors are hoping to give Kniefl a strong start to her first year as varsity head coach. They’re all also extremely excited to see their former junior varsity coach calling the shots.
“I’m super excited. Laura has been with the program for a few years now on JV, and she’s very knowledgeable and she’s played a lot of softball,” Clement responds enthusiastically when speaking about her new head coach. “Everyone on the team is excited to have her as our head coach and we want to make sure she has an awesome first year.”
For Kniefl, she’s just grateful her team is getting a chance to compete. She’s tempering expectations this year, and while she wants to pick up some wins, she’s more concerned with her players improving and having fun after being away from the sport for over a year.
“Obviously we want to win games, but the biggest thing this year, especially with having been off for over a year, getting the kids involved, and to get them to play as a team. The only way you learn is by playing, so there’s going to be some learning curves.”
In her first year, Kniefl is hoping to see the team improve on offense and defense. Two years ago, the co-op was often in contention in the majority of its games, but their inability to put pressure on opposing defenses, coupled with at least one rough inning on defense, was arguably the team’s biggest setbacks.
“I’d like to focus on defense this year. You know how the saying goes ‘defense wins games and championships,’” Kniefl says. “We’re really trying to get the defense side of things down and then just have fun with our hitting.”
Clement says a few tweaks on offense and defense could be all that is needed for those wins, and perhaps some hardware at the end of the season.
“I think we need to work on our batting skills and just the knowledge of the game, like knowing when to bunt and knowing when to run or steal. Then also picking up our defense a little bit more, and trying to get those three outs a little bit quicker than past years.”
No matter what happens on the softball diamond this season, all the players and coaching staff were united in their sense of gratitude and happiness in having a season after a year away.
“With everything so unpredictable right now, I’m grateful that we can be out here,” Oelrich says as she gets ready to practice. “I think it’s going to be a little bit hard, but we’re all pretty close. So I think it will be easy working together, and I think we’re looking forward to playing again.”
