No matter if it is 90 degrees outside, raining or even six a.m., the GHS varsity softball team can be found out on the fields. The players spend countless hours perfecting their techniques and trying to create a trusting team environment.
The team had their first tournament the weekend of Friday, Aug. 18, winning all five of their games. The players are working hard to get as far as they did last season, which was second place at the state tournament. There have been a few changes that have had to be made to accommodate the new team and help further them into the season.
“We always set three goals: the conference title, the district title and the state title,” head coach Bill Heard said. “The girls work really hard to try to reach these goals, it takes a lot of time.”
The team has been practicing since early July, working on offense, defense and building greater relationships with the hope that this will benefit them down the road. They have three high demanding goals that they are working towards, but they believe that the team will be able to accomplish them all if they continue putting in the effort.
“In order to be the best team that we can possibly be, we have to work together,” junior Alexis Jensen said. “We also have to trust each other more than we did last year.”
Softball is a sport that relies on trust, and trust makes it easier to overcome obstacles.
“There is not much difference between last year and this year,” Coach Heard said. “We feel like what we have in place is pretty much what we had a year ago.”
The team is driven to stick together through whatever gets thrown at them this season. They have had to change what they need to work on at practice and switch up their perspective to focus more on team bonding.
“We have been practicing trust and holding each other accountable for mistakes,” Jensen said. “We also are making sure we know how to fix things that go wrong.”
This season looks a little different from last year with the high schools splitting. Players said they believe that this will not affect them and only cause them to strive more for the state title win.
“The splitting did not affect us really at all. We are using what we have and doing our best with that,” sophomore Megan Marshall said. “I think the season will go really well. We want the state title really bad.”
