Blake Colston
sports@piedmontnewsonline.com
The waiting is over for Piedmont’s softball team and its fans.
As a month-long social media countdown on Lady Wildcat softball accounts on Facebook and Twitter now indicate, the season opener at Santa Fe South is today.
“You’re always excited for the season to start. Especially whenever you feel like you have a chance to be pretty good,” head coach Keith Coleman said. “That makes it a little more exciting.”
Excitement is abundant around Piedmont’s program and with good reason. The ‘Cats return seven full or part-time starters from a team that blew away preseason expectations and finished 30-7 and advanced to the 5A state finals.
“It’s going to be a different type of year. We aren’t going to be an underdog anymore,” Coleman said. “People will circle us on the schedule and save their best pitcher for us in tournaments.”
The season begins with three relatively easy district games, starting with a doubleheader at Santa Fe South today and continuing with a single game at Eisenhower on Tuesday.
“I want to see clean play. We want to be fundamentally sound and we want to be able to execute,” Coleman said.
The schedule gets tougher this weekend at the Chisholm Trail Tournament in Shawnee, where some of the top teams in several classes will meet.
Coleman said he hasn’t set a firm lineup yet, but has settled on the 12 or 13 players he plans to use regularly.
“The mistake I made my first year here was playing 15 or 16 kids,” he said. “It helped for the future, but during the season I don’t think kids ever got really comfortable.”
Position battles continue at third base, second base and in the outfield. Coleman anticipates playing some combination of Tara Hibbler, Sydney Kozikoski, Mehgan Ray, Jade Rowland, Kenedi Morelock and Rikki Hadley. Cozee Clark will start at shortstop with Ellie Griffin and Sydney Kozikoski splitting time at catcher. Chloe Bohuslavicky will see the vast majority of time at pitcher. Molly McDermott will be used as a designated player.
“We should be better in the circle, better on offense, and by end of the year, we’ll be as good on defense as we were last season,” Coleman said.
After winning 30 games last season, Piedmont hopes to reach or even surpass that number this season.
“My number is 30. If you win that many, you’ve beaten a lot of good teams. That’s always been my magic number,” Coleman said.
