The 2021 season was a tale of two halves for the Park Hill softball team as it won five of its first seven games before losing nine of the final 12 games to end with an 8-11 record.
The Lady Trojans won back-to-back district titles ahead of last season and are looking to get back to that level of play. After losing five seniors, Park Hill will look to a younger core of players in the fall.
“We have a lot of young girls, our freshman class that came in replaced our seniors by almost double,” Park Hill head softball coach Kylie Guthier said. “We’re young, we’re fresh and we have a lot of talent at the freshman and sophomore levels.”
Park Hill’s Kamree Davis is one of the Lady Trojans’ four seniors for this upcoming fall.
Park Hill’s four seniors – Taylor Cozart, Alyssa Ball, Kamree Davis and Kiley Braun – have all stepped up ahead of the season as leaders. They have been helping the younger girls get prepared for the fall.
“The seniors have done a great job on running practices and getting things going. I would say since the group is young, our strength right now is that we’re scrappy, we’re very go get them and we’ve got a lot of energy because we are so young,” Guthier said.
Davis is the only returning pitcher from last fall as the Lady Trojans currently are still sorting out who will see some time on the mound during regular season play. Park Hill has switched divisions in the Kansas City Suburban Conference and has some tough opponents on its schedule.
“We have to be adaptive in this conference, we have to be able to play small ball and get some power with our offense. Then we have to be able to stop a lot with these teams that hit really well; we have to be a wall and stop everything and be versatile in everything,” Guthier said.
The Lady Trojans are aiming for improvement when they take the softball field this season, with hopes to be better than last season. Park Hill kicks off the fall in the Greater Kansas City Softball Tournament, starting on August 26.
“Last year we got out first game of districts, so this year we want to get a little further than that and get to the championship game. We were around a .500 team last year, so we want to do a little bit better than that and I think it’ll be good for our young girls to get them going,” Guthier said.