Waukon softball team plays to 7-20 season record, fifth-place NEIC finish under first-year head coach
The Waukon softball team played to a 7-20 overall season record during its 2016 campaign, compiling a 3-12 mark that placed the Indians fifth in the final six-team Northeast Iowa Conference standings - Oelwein not being able to field a varsity team once again this season. Guiding the Indians through this summer’s campaign was first-year head coach Amanda Eggerichs, who found herself assuming the reins of the program late in the spring after previous head coach Joe O’Neill was stricken with health issues and was not able to coach the team this season.
It was that late change in the program helm that Coach Eggerichs sees as one of the greatest obstacles this season’s squad had to overcome, although it was obviously an unavoidable situation. “Honestly, I think one of the greatest challenges this year was having the head coach come in so late in the game,” Coach Eggerichs reasoned. “I had to learn the girls’ abilities and find where they excelled the best. The first few games were spent trying to find where everyone gelled best together on the field. We also struggled with the batting order and trying to decide the best line-up that would string some hits together. Hopefully, now that I will be able to work with the girls in the off-season we can really focus on the fundamentals, offensively and defensively.”
Once those early growing pains began to be remedied, the team showed signs of what it was truly capable of. A win over then 14th-rated Iowa Falls-Alden at the Charles City Softball Classic was among the early-season highlights, with the Indians showing their continued improvement by avoiding sweeps in Northeast Iowa Conference play with final series victories over both Charles City (the Class 4A fifth-place finisher at this year’s State Tournament) and Decorah, the one team the Indians finished ahead of in the final Northeast Iowa Conference standings.
“Our greatest accomplishment is that we continually improved throughout the season, which allowed us to take some big wins, or have much closer games, in our second time playing some opponents,” Coach Eggerichs explained. “For example, we went over to Charles City and came home with a very big victory (a 6-5 Indian win after having a home doubleheader swept away from them by the Comets in a pair of mercy-rule losses). That shows our opponents that we are a competitive team. We need to take this growth and continue to build on it through the off-season to prepare for next season. We have six seniors to replace, but the underclassmen have the abilities to work hard.”
Those six seniors include Kaley Benzing, Emily Hammel, Leslie Sivesind, Madison Snitker, Bethany Stock and Kaela Wood. Completion of this season brought an end to not only their high school softball careers, but also an era of high school competition in multiple sports for most all of them.
“This year’s seniors are a great group of girls,” Coach Eggerichs commented. “As I stated earlier, we will have some big shoes to fill. They did a nice job stepping up and being leaders on and off the field with the underclassmen. They continued to strive to get better by coming in early or staying late to take extra cuts in the cage, grounders, pop-flies, or whatever they wanted to get better at. That is an exemplary skill to have in your seniors as the underclassmen look up to them. These six ladies will definitely be missed.”
It was this year’s senior class that not only provided a great deal of expected veteran leadership, but also takes away an abundance of statistical leadership as well. Half of those senior leaders turned in the softball Tribe’s top three hit totals, with Snitker pacing the Indian offense with 26 hits. That same trio was also most efficient at the plate for the Indians, with Sivesind converting at a team-high .340 batting average this season. Snitker also tallied a team-high 20 runs scored and shared team honors of nine runs batted in (RBI) with junior Regan Wasson.
Sivesind also shouldered a vast majority of this season’s pitching duties, logging 111 of the Tribe’s 171 innings pitched this season. That inning leadership resulted in the obvious lead of 44 strike-outs this season, but also played out to a team low of just 10 walks. Snitker also logged team lows of a 3.71 earned run average and a .186 opponent batting average in some limited time spent on the mound this season.
For their efforts this season, both Snitker and Sivesind were named to the Northeast Iowa Conference All-Conference Team, Snitker being a First Team selection as an outfielder and Sivesind receiving Honorable Mention. Snitker was also joined by fellow senior Kaley Benzing in being honored for achieving a formidable combination of athletic and academic success by receiving Academic All-State recognition.
As evident in Wasson’s share of a team-high nine RBI, not all of this season’s production leaves with the graduation of this year’s large senior class. Wasson and sophomore Audry Fahey finished within the team’s top five in several other statistical categories, including ranking second and third, respectively, in runs scored; first and second, respectively, in runs batted in; and rotating the fourth and fifth rankings in both hits and batting average for the season.
On the defensive side of the ball, junior Deana Schlitter will bring back the Tribe’s second-best overall and top infield fielding percentage of .953 from her first base position. Sophomore Lauren Elliott also logged the team’s second most innings on the mound, gaining 43 innings of varsity experience there to spin the team’s lowest number of combined free passes with just 12 walks issued and no hit batters.
It will be those four underclassman varsity mainstays who will look to headline next season’s effort. But Coach Eggerichs knows it will take much more than just a handful of returning varsity veterans in order to improve as a team.
“Hitting, hitting, and more hitting,” she replied to a question of what she would like to see her team’s off-season consist of. “We did a good job making contact but will have to be able to get our hits out of the infield, find some holes/gaps, as well as string hits together throughout the line-up in order to compete with our opponents next year. We also have to fill five positions out of the nine, which means we will be working hard on our defensive skills. As always, though, we just want to continue to improve on the fundamentals and basics of the game.”
