By: Katelyn Ramsey

The junior varsity softball team is made up of mostly of girls who have never played softball before high school.  With the lack of experience, it can be quite difficult when working with a team like this. 

“It’s fun.  Knaack’s going to hate me, but I thought it would be easy,” said freshman Courtney Bowman about her first year playing softball.  “No hand-eye coordination, not much running…  It’s nothing like that.” 

Bowman hasn’t gotten the opportunity to play in a game yet, though she is still at every practice and every game. 

“My mom wanted me to try a sport but this is the only one I like,” Bowman said.

Assistant coach Kim Wohlford said there are many new players, and much improvement since the beginning of the season. 

“There are a lot of girls who don’t have experience,” Wohlford said.  “We’ve won as many games as last year.  We have girls with athletic ability without team experience.”

With only enough girls to barely make two teams, there are about five girls playing for both teams, juniors Donna Jacks and Mayalisa Barnard, sophomores Krista Hutchinson and Amanda Renno, and freshman Cali Porter. 

“It’s a good experience because I can go between teams and play at different levels,” said junior Donna Jacks about switching between junior varsity and varsity every day.  “On varsity, I can learn things, but on JV, I can teach things.  But when switching teams, you have to play with different girls and learn different signs.”

However, sophomore, Krista Hutchinson feels differently about switching teams. 

“It stinks to be the worst of the best and the best of the worst,” Hutchinson said. 

Hutchinson likes playing softball for Oak Park softball, but she also likes playing for her summer team. 

“[For Oak Park] we don’t get to choose people we play with, so you have to deal with the hard and the rough,”  Hutchinson said.

Coaches get to choose who is on each team, so the players don’t have any control over who they have to play with.