Photo from the 2017-18 B&G Archives.
This year’s Malden High School softball team has begun their season with a hardworking attitude. The team did not perform to the best of their capabilities last season, however this year will hopefully be an improvement on their skills and achieve their goal of making it into the state tournament.
The softball team, like most varsity teams, has suffered from the lost of key senior players that performed well last year. In response to this, the team has had more underclassmen on the varsity team this year. Although she also played on varsity last year, sophomore Sarah Whitehouse is determined to have her best season yet.
Whitehouse is excited for this season because since she has already been on the team for an entire season, she feels more comfortable interacting with other players on the team that had been there for a long time.
According to Whitehouse, there have also been additional players that are playing for varsity for the first time this year. The first of which is sophomore Amanda Do Val, who is playing for varsity for the first time after playing for JV last season. Whitehouse describes that Do Val has “been doing a good job keeping up with the Varsity practices.” Whitehouse is happy to have new players because she wants the newcomers to learn the same passion for the sport of Softball that she and other members of the team has learned.
One of the team’s strengths this season is how supportive the teammates are of one another no matter the circumstance. Whitehouse explained that all the members of the team always tries to make sure nobody feels terrible after they make a mistake. She stated “even if [the team is] losing or somebody makes a mistake our biggest strength as a team is always making that person who is upset feels better. Our best skill is picking up the entire team when we are down.” This softball team is very supportive of each other, however the team still has much to improve on throughout the season approaching.
One aspect of the team that must be improved upon is their fielding. In the previous seasons, they were terrific at fielding however due to the lost of many senior players, they left a hole in many of the fielding positions such as the senior pitcher, senior catcher and senior shortstop. Whitehouse believes that there are enough remaining and new members of the team to fill the positions that was left behind. She stated “filling the positions will be hopefully easy because she has faith that the players can step up and do it.” Along with fielding the team also needs to work on making less errors to make the innings shorter.
Overall the Softball team is ready to improve upon their mistakes and inexperience, and to create a new path to succeed. Make sure to support the softball team at their first game on April 10th.
