Softball ended its season on May 3 with a second-round playoff loss to Sunnyslope. During the season, the team had 23 wins and eight losses. The team is only losing five senior players this year, so they are already looking toward the following season. 

The team started on a winning streak but lost some games towards the end. Head coach Robert Hehe said, “We were not the number one seeded team for about 3/4 of the season. Then we hit a little rough patch and then got back into the rhythm for a week or two, but once we got into the playoffs, we went back to not playing so well.” Sophomore player Amiya Hernandez attributes part of their success this season to their bond.”I think we did pretty well this season; we did a good job of working as a team and playing for each other,” said Hernandez. 

As well as not having as many spots to fill with only five seniors leaving, the JV team went undefeated, which will help the varsity team when they move up next year. “There are a lot of strong players, but I know the new girls coming in next year are also really good players, so we will be okay,” said junior Alexa Ortiz. Hehe also agrees that this year’s JV team will help the team become stronger. “This team will be equally as strong as it was this year plus a little bit better because of the JV contributions that will be coming in,” said Hehe.  

With the season-ending and next year already on their minds, the team is thinking of what needs to be done to improve next year. “I think we need to stop playing in our heads and tight. We all know that when we play fun and loose we always play better, so that’s something we need to work on,” said Ortiz. Another player, sophomore Sienna Kunze, says that the team needs to work more on letting go of mistakes. “Picking each other up when we make errors, so then it doesn’t compile into a lot of errors,” said Kunze. 

As well as working on the team’s mentality for next year, Hehe is looking for some technical improvement from the team involving their hitting. “We need to be a lot more consistent. We had games where we went out and put out 15 hits, then other days where we only get one or two hits, somehow we have to find a consistency of playing to get those hits all the time,” said Hehe. 

Though the next softball season is not for another year, the team is already thinking about the next, and building on the foundation from this year.