The Lady Spartans are eliminated from State tournament.
photo by Carlos Covarrubias
The softball team was the ranked 12th coming into the 2009 playoffs, and with the historically great season behind them, they were expected to do great things. The tournament style was double elimination and the softball team was in a tough region with the top teams in the state competing against them.
On Friday the Spartans took on Silver Creek High School ranked 13th in 4A, and Palisade High School ranked 29th in 4A. Although the Spartans played as hard as they could, they would lose to Silver Creek by a score of 15-2. “We made a lot of mental mistakes; mistakes that we haven’t made for a long time now,” said Senior Captain and Pitcher Aryn Grywuiewicz who pitched her heart out in both games. She noted that the team made base running mistakes, which took away chances for the Spartans to score. Not only were the Spartans making mistakes, but they also couldn’t get any help from the umpires either. The Spartans were able to take advantage of Silver Creek’s mistakes, but it wasn’t enough to get the win.
After losing to Silver Creek, the Spartans rallied themselves back up to take on Palisade High School. The Spartans came in confident and played great the entire game and were up by one going into the ninth inning. “We made a crucial mistake that gave them some momentum back,” said Grywuiewicz. When it came time for the Spartans to bat they struggled, not getting many hits, and loosing the game 9-8. “It’s heartbreaking and it’s going to take a while to get over this loss. It is hard to end your season like this, but for us seniors it’s even harder because not only did we not win a state title, but also we will most likely never play with the same girls again. We have some great memories to look back on this year and I am going to miss everything about this team,” said Grywuiewicz. For the five seniors: Lauren Kelsch, Morgan Bertram, Stephanie Warren, Shalece Jackson, and Aryn Grywuiewicz, their high school softball careers are over now.
“We had a good year, but not a great year,” said Head Coach Kyler Jackson, who is already planning for next year’s team. “I plan to do more fundamental drills like base running and bunting, along with strength training and teaching more signs so we can steal more bases,” said Jackson, who also said that he is very proud of the season and his wonderful team, but is nonetheless disappointed on how it ended. “We didn’t get beat by the other teams, we beat ourselves. I feel that we should be playing for state right now, but we’re not. The only thing we can do is learn from our mistakes and continue moving forward,” said Jackson.
