Following a 17-0 loss Tuesday afternoon to Gladstone in the team’s home opener, the Philomath High softball team gathered for a chat with coach Travis King and assistant Amie Russell under a tree in the northeast corner of Clemens Field.
A seventh straight loss to start the season was the latest difficult pill to swallow for the program, which went up against the Gladiators with a lineup that featured only underclassmen. Sure, it’s a team in rebuilding mode with inexperience factoring into a challenging equation but King believes he has players that can turn the corner and start winning some games.
Gallery: PHS softball vs. Gladstone (April 2, 2024)
A collection of photos from Philomath High’s softball game at home vs. Gladstone on Tuesday
Game preparation is one of the areas where he said the players need to improve.
“We need to have game-type reps in practice,” King said. “We haven’t quite treated it that way and until we do, I don’t think it gets any better.”
Philomath played the game without one of its top players with junior center fielder Kaylie Kohler sidelined with an unspecified injury. The team’s preseason roster also took a hit with an impact senior opting to focus on another sport.
“I think we’re down to 11 or 12 on the varsity side and we don’t really have anyone on JV yet that we can bring up,” King said. “I put one down to JV because she’s going to get more playing time there so we’re trying to go with a core nine that we’ve seen what they can do. The biggest thing now is that they’ve got to want it more than I do.”
Gladstone (5-3) won the game on the 15-run mercy rule after four innings. The Gladiators pounded out nine hits and took advantage of nine Philomath errors while pitcher Ashlynne Franssen, a hard-throwing freshman, limited the Warriors lineup to a single hit.
“We just haven’t been able to click and I don’t know if I chalk that up to youth — because we do have a lot of it,” King said. “We’re still building the pitching side of things. We’ve seen one pitcher throw some strikes and another pitcher struggling to hit the strike zone, so that’s been tough.”
When mired in a losing streak, teams look for little victories within each game to try to build some sort of momentum that they hope will lead to more positive results in the future. King said there were some of those moments during the team’s appearance in a Spring Break tournament at Medford.
“Zoee (Howard) hit a homer off a Marist pitcher and in the Cascade Christian game, we put some runs on the board and played really well,” King said. “We stayed with Hoopa Valley for almost six innings before things started to go sideways.”
Junior Laighla Hockema has shown flashes of success in the circle and that was the case against the Gladiators. Coming in for freshman starter Haley King with no outs and the bases loaded in the second inning, Hockema struck out the first batter she faced and after a Gladstone base runner got caught in a rundown thanks to a strong throw to third by junior catcher Jenae Traglia, she struck out another batter for a third straight out to end the inning.
“We saw that in the back half of Spring Break … she came in and pitched two games,” King said about Hockema. “We weren’t sure what we could expect yet because she wasn’t sure about how much she could give but she felt good and she was throwing strikes. We’ve just got to back her up.”
King also mentioned that despite getting just one hit, the team showed a level of improvement at the plate.
“Today we made contact with the ball better than we have,” King said. “We just haven’t been making quality at-bats and that’s another tough part because we’re not seeing anything that’s exceptionally outstanding when it comes to pitching.”
Philomath got batters on base in the first and second innings. Down 3-0 in the first, Traglia worked a walk out of the leadoff position. She advanced to second on a passed ball and made it to third with one out. But back-to-back strikeouts stranded her there.
In the second, junior Lilia Leman connected on a two-out single to center field but she was stranded as well. The Warriors went down 1-2-3 in both the third and fourth innings.
Philomath will play two more home games this week with a 3:30 p.m. Friday appearance against Pendleton and a 10 a.m. Saturday matchup against La Grande — the start time on the latter game moved up three hours from what had appeared on the original schedule.
