'It is so much fun to experience this': Northwestern softball excited to make regionals
WEST SALEM — The Northwestern softball team is fueled in a few unique areas that have helped propel it into regional play for the second time in four seasons.
Solid defense, quality at-bats, a tireless work ethic and a tough Wayne County Athletic League schedule that rarely gives the team a day off.
“Taking the seniors back to regionals after we did it their freshman year is pretty special,” said Northwestern coach Scott Hershey. “You can’t say that has happened a lot over the last few years. We did it [in] ‘16 and ‘19, so that is kind of the same scenario. This is a good group of girls, and during their senior year we thought it would be a pretty good opportunity to do some good.
“We had that pandemic year, and unfortunately that would have been a good year for some of them to get some varsity experience, and maybe last year to have our best year and then carry that into this year. But as it turned out, maybe we are just a year later than what we were hoping to be, but this is exciting.”
After losing 3-0 to Brookside in last year’s district title game, the Huskies (19-6) turned the tables last week with a convincing 8-0 victory over the Cardinals. Northwestern advanced to play Ursuline in a Division III regional semifinal at 4 p.m. Wednesday at Ravenna High School.
“It is so much fun to experience this,” said Hershey. “The farther you go, the more fun it gets. Districts is fun, and when you get to regionals it is just more fun. This is something the girls will never forget.”
Of the seven Northwestern seniors, three are starters. They all said the WCAL and hard work have prepared them for the postseason.
“At the beginning of the season I knew this was a special team,” said senior Emma Ewing. “We’ve all played together so long and work hard and have a good connection, but we really started to pick things up toward the end of the season. Really at the beginning of the tournaments I knew we could make it far.
“We face a lot of competition in the league. Hillsdale is obviously our biggest competition, and Norwayne was pretty good, too. They were tough. Avery [Garver] and I played on the regional team together as freshmen. Getting to go this far with these seniors means a lot.”
“I think this is pretty awesome, especially since we get to play past the time we got out of school,” said senior Laurissa Fulton. “We wanted to win the WCAL and got close, and that was tough as always, but we knew the potential we had as a team based on last year. We’ve had the same team basically all the way from middle school until now, and we work hard. I think it is just really cool that we get to do this as seniors.”
According to Garver, one regular-season tournament stood out.
“This is just super fun,” the senior said. “It was the Keystone tournament when we had two big games. Those were the games where we thought we can go far in the tournament. Beating bigger schools [9-6 victory over Elyria Catholic] gave us some confidence as opposed to playing all the little schools. As seniors, we’ve always been really close playing on the same teams since, I don’t know, around sixth grade. Growing up with all of them the last four years has just been super fun.”
Daylie Rickard, Marina Aulger, Audrey Franks, Kara Burgan, Alysa Troyan, Quinn Fast and the above seniors will likely take the field on Wednesday.
Hershey said with the lack of clutch hitting at times, defense has been the team’s calling card.
“We’ve had some trouble getting runners in,” he said. “Clutch hitting has been a problem for us at times. We get runners on but have not been able to drive them in. But we’ve hung our hats during the last half of the year on our defense. You can see just watching practice today we put a lot of work in on defense. We stress it’s important to think ahead and get lead outs, and I think this group does all that well.
“We continue to stress two-strike hitting, about making the pitcher work and battle her every pitch. And we’ve been doing a pretty good job of that.”
Sophomore Olivia Amstutz will get the start in the circle against Ursuline.
“We’ve got three quality pitchers, and we kind of did a rotation with them,” said Hershey. “Toward the end, Liv has kind of stepped up, and we are going to ride her through the tournament. I have all the confidence in any of the three I put out there as their ERAs are all really good.”
Hershey said his team’s work ethic is one quality that really stands out.
"For a lot of these girls, softball is their main sport,” he said. “For a lot of them, the offseason focus is on softball. They all get along, and it is a group that all fits well together.
“With them all working well together, it is like one unit out on the field.”
This article originally appeared on Ashland Times Gazette: Northwestern softball happy to make it back to regionals
