Sitka High softball players stretched their legs in the team’s first home games of the season, Thursday through Saturday on the turf at Moller Field, winning three, losing three and tying two against teams from across the state.
Sitka led off Thursday with losses to Chugiak and Kodiak, 10-1 and 5-4 respectively, but followed up with a 16-1 rout over Wasilla.
Friday afternoon in weather that was alternately sunny and snowy, Sitka dismantled Juneau 13-3 as the home team’s bats lit up, and the Lady Wolves’ pitching kept the Crimson Bears from mounting a comeback.
“We're just trying to figure out what our identity as a team is,” said Sitka coach Jael McCarty following that Juneau game. “I just keep telling them, 'the minute you decide to believe you're as good as I've been telling you you are, we're going to have some really great games,' and they're starting to pick it up and try all the new things we've been trying. And it's worked out the last couple games.”
After scoring 5 runs in the first inning, Sitka’s defense, led by junior Alina Lebahn on the pitcher's mound, stepped up and ensured that only three Juneau-Douglas batters stepped up to the plate in the top of the second. Sitka kept up the pressure in the bottom of the second and scored 6 more runs, with runners batted in by Sadie Saline, Veda West, Molly Pepper and Madison Campbell, all in the span of only a few minutes.
While Juneau attempted to rally in the third inning and scored 3 runs, Sitka scored twice more in the bottom of the third before the game ended at its 65-minute time limit and Sitka won 13-3.
“I feel like we’re doing good, we got those first games out of the way and now we're good to go... It’s a bit of a different field. Still just figuring out everyone on the field, trying out different field setups,” SHS pitcher Alina Lebahn told the Sentinel after the win.
Lebahn thinks the Wolves’ pitching staff is solid this year.
“We have a lot of variety with our pitchers. We have a lot of different speeds, a lot of different everything,” she said.
The team is just now finding its footing in the early season, said Sadie Saline, also a junior.
“Now we’re cooking, we found our groove… Our hitting was on and our defense was on, too,” Saline said.
Madison Campbell, a senior, thinks the team could stand to improve its hitting.
“The timing when swinging at the ball is not quite there,” she said. The squad’s pitching is “looking good,” she added. Campbell pitched on Thursday.
At this point in the first weeks of the season, Lebahn said, the team is focused on “fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals, they get you through the game.”
Coach McCarty highlighted her team’s pitching as a reason the Wolves overcame the Crimson Bears.
“Our pitchers were working good today,” McCarty said. “Alina's balls were hitting the right spots, and she was pitching them just where they needed to be out of the zone when she was ahead in the count, and we had some solid defense behind her, which always makes the pitcher more comfortable.”
Saline wants to see her team improve their “routine plays” through the season.
“Sometimes we just get really excited and really want to get that out, and that's when we pull our heads up, we pick up our gloves, and we just need to always remember to go back to stupid simple,” Saline said.
She recalled her double RBI in the second inning in detail.
“I was just waiting for my pitch, and I saw a pitch that I liked, and I put my hands to the ball, swung hard, and it worked. Fundamentals don't fail,” she said.
The intermittently foul weather on the diamond Friday – there was snow on the ground briefly in the morning – forced players to be extra careful when throwing, she noted.
“That's when you really need to find the seam of the ball,” Saline said.
Later Friday, Sitka suffered a 10-1 loss to Chugiak, as the Mustangs scored 9 runs in the third inning. On Saturday, Sitka and Juneau tied 3-3, and Sitka beat Ketchikan 10-3 before tying Wasilla 6-6. The preseason jamboree tournament pitted a variety of teams against each other in short, timed games that ended after 65 minutes regardless of the inning, the coach noted.
“It is just getting us as much practice for all these teams as possible. We're getting six to eight games per team, and just seeing a lot of live pitching and a lot of situations so they can be ready going into their regular season,” McCarty said.
The team has more softball games coming up this month, with the regional tournament set for late May in Ketchikan.
As the season enters high gear, McCarty hopes to see the team “embracing their identity. We're going to be a scrappy team that fights for everything that we get, and we're going to be an aggressive team taking extra bases when we can and just living up to that scrappy identity.”
