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Another season of NS softball is coming to an end, and with that comes saying goodbye to head coach Sharon Christensen and four seniors. But this goodbye ends on a sweet note as the team finished this season tied for second in region with Canyon View, both with a 4-4 region record.
The Lady Hawks won the coin toss between the two, giving them the second seed going into the state tournament. NS heads into the tournament after a 13-6 loss against Wasatch last Wednesday, but with their 10-0 win against Lone Peak the previous week the team feels confident about their chances at state.
“I think we’re going to do really good at state,” said junior Lexie Olson. “If we bring our A-game and are confident in ourselves and within our team, and trust each other then we’re going to do really well.”
While the team feels good about state, there have been rough games they feel they should have won but didn’t, and they hope to avoid this at state.
“We played really well early in the season,” said coach Landon Bailey, “but the last few weeks or so we’ve kind of went down a little bit, but we’re starting to play better now so hopefully we’ll play better when state actually happens…We have a pretty good draw [of girls], and hopefully we play like we should and do well.”
While the players and coaches look forward to state, they also look back on this season to see what they have accomplished and to see what improvements can be made next year.
“Overall we’ve performed well,” Christensen said. “We have a lot of talent, but we’ve still made more errors defensively than we would like to, and offensively we’ve maybe struggled with our bats more than we would like to, but we have a very talented team…They put a lot of effort in in the off season, they’ve been very dedicated during the season.”
Many coaches would look back on the season and wish they could change the way they did things, but Christensen says she would not have done anything differently. The players agree with this, saying they would make few changes.
“I liked how they coached,” Olson said.
While there may be a few changes made, the players are happy with the coaching, and will certainly miss Coach Christensen, as well as their seniors. Losing these girls will have an impact on the team, especially as this team meshed well together, and the younger players will need to step up for the next season to continue what they had this year as a team.
“The team was amazing,” said sophomore Annika Rainey. “We all got along; we were all happy. Personally I feel like we could have done a little bit better, but I feel that I’ve gotten better over the years so hopefully we keep progressing.”
