National Conference
Life in the National Conference has been more interesting this season than many had predicted.
Coming as no surprise is the fact that Neshaminy and Pennsbury are tied for the conference’s top spot with identical 10-1 records. What may be a surprise to many is the fact that Council Rock North – which boasts a 10-2 mark in conference play – has made it a three-team race.
A whole lot can happen since the three teams will spend the last week of the season doing battle with each other. The home stretch looks like this:
Pennsbury will travel to Council Rock South on Thursday and on Monday will host William Tennent. The Falcons will close out the regular season on Wednesday with a showdown against Neshaminy at Bristol Fields.
Neshaminy will travel to Harry S. Truman on Thursday to face a Tiger team desperate to keep its playoff hopes alive and then it will hit the road for a non-league game at Garnet Valley on Saturday. On Tuesday, the Redskins will travel to Council Rock North, and they will close out the regular season on Wednesday when they will face Pennsbury in a 7:30 p.m. game at the Bristol Fields.
Council Rock North will host Bensalem on Thursday and Neshaminy on Tuesday. The Indians will close out their season with a non-league game at North Penn on Wednesday.
A whole lot can change in the span of a week that promises to be interesting.
‘Permission to dream’ – Hollie Woodard took over the reins of a struggling Council Rock North program six years ago believing that righting the ship would be a relatively simple task.
“I honestly thought I was going to walk in, and all of a sudden, we were going to win games,” the Indians’ coach said.
The Indians won four games her first year.
“It’s been an incredibly humbling situation,” Woodard said. “There are so many different parts to the game, especially when you’re trying to build a program and get people to believe in you.”
A lot has changed since Woodard took over the helm, and she has turned both her players and her opponents into believers.
Last year, the Indians advanced to districts for the first time in five years, and this year, they are not only assured a district berth, they are just one game out of first place with three games remaining.
“I think what happened for us this year actually happened last year,” Woodard said. “Last year we broke some barriers that helped us think we could play at the next level.
“Last year, we had excellent seniors, excellent leaders, and they set the tone that – ‘Yes, we are going to be a team that competes, and we’re willing to do what it takes. We’re going to buy into the system, we’re going to drop the drama and do whatever we need to do to get to the next level.’”
This year, the Indians – whose theme is ‘Permission to Dream’ - lived out the dream when they beat perennial league and district power Pennsbury.
“Once they did that – I think now the confidence is up, but I think last year was the big turning point for our program,” Woodard said.
Appropriately, three of last year’s seniors – Cindy Catapano, Sarah Bunke and Chloe Pinto – were at the Indians’ win over Pennsbury.
“There wasn’t a girl on our bench that didn’t feel like they were a part of it,” Woodard said of last year’s seniors. “After we won the game, before I went to my post-game, I went up to them and said, ‘We’re not in this game without you. You guys set the tone.’
“It started with that dream last year, and this year’s seniors have had the opportunity to make it come to fruition.”
According to the Indians’ coach, seniors Caytlin Friis, Morgan Lewis, Alyssa Smith, Alex Tremitiere and Dianna O’Hara represent the heart and soul of this year’s squad.
“We just have incredibly strong senior leadership this year too,” Woodard said. “They’re a hard-working group of girls, and I’m glad we’re finally starting to be successful.”
Woodard is a strong believer that excelling in softball is about a whole lot more than just learning the skills.
“My coaching philosophy is that there is a mental, social and physical part of the game,” she said. “We actually practice the social part of the game. We have retreats, we have activities.
“There’s a philosophy that you don’t have to be friends to play together. I believe that’s absolutely not true. This is the ultimate opportunity to make lifelong friends, and we preach that to them.”
Last Saturday, the Indians held their annual Sisterhood of Softball Day, which included a free clinic for members of the junior high teams, parent Olympics as well as some unofficial scrimmages and a cake fight to cap off the day.
“It’s one of those activities designed to implement the social aspect of the game – it’s about having fun, being friends, eliminating the competition and not competing with one another,” Woodard said. “We’re having a really good time.
“We’re learning a lot of life lessons, and I’m so proud of the girls because they genuinely believed they could do something, and they did it.”
While the seniors have pulled this year’s team together, a sophomore – Dominique Pinto – is having a remarkable season as well. On Tuesday, the sophomore catcher upped her hitting streak to 15 games, and she’s also been stellar behind the plate.
“Only two people have been able to steal,” Woodard said. “Everybody who steals on her is dead out. There’s no other catcher hitting as well as she is or is the physical presence she is.”
Continental Conference
In a conference where anything can happen – and usually does, the last week of the season figures to be every bit as interesting as the first seven.
Two games separate the top four teams.
Hatboro-Horsham is 10-2 with just two games remaining, but they are huge games. The Hatters will host Central Bucks South in a showdown between the SOL’s elite on Thursday, and on Monday, the Hatters will travel to North Penn.
Central Bucks South is 9-2 in league play, and the Titans will face a tough stretch that begins with a trip to Hatboro-Horsham on Thursday and is followed by a home game against Souderton on Friday. On Monday, the Titans will host Central Bucks West, and they will close out their regular season with a non-league game against Germantown Academy on Tuesday.
Souderton (9-3 SOL) have a chance to make some noise in the final week. The Indians will host North Penn on Thursday and then will travel to Central Bucks South on Friday. On Monday, the Indians hit the road to face Central Bucks East and, on Wednesday, will travel to West Chester Henderson for a non-league game.
North Penn, which boasts an 8-4 record in league play, may not win the conference crown, but they can have some say in who does. The Maidens will travel to Souderton on Friday and then will host Hatboro on Monday. They will close out the regular season with a non-league game against Council Rock North on Wednesday.
Stay tuned!
Oh what a week – Liz Parkins might not have been one of the SOL’s high profile pitchers coming into the season. She certainly is now.
The Souderton senior has officially added her name to the list of the league’s elite pitching stars after a five-day span last week that saw Parkins accumulate a 4-0 record while fanning 58 or an average of 14.5 a game.
For good measure, Parkins tossed a pair of shutouts this week, striking out 12 in a 2-0 win over Perkiomen Valley on Monday and then fanning nine and allowing three hits in a 6-0 shutout over Pennridge on Tuesday.
“The fun part about it is you watch her, and she never looks like she’s working hard,” coach Courtney Hughes said. “She’s just going out there, she’s using her pitches, and they’re swinging at it. “As a coach, you sometimes worry if you’re overusing her, if you see any fatigue, but with Liz, she gets stronger as the game goes on. She starts figuring out which pitches are really working. It never looks like work to her.
“When you watch her on the mound, she’s just very comfortable. It’s just a very fluid motion she has, and it never looks as if she’s tired.”
Last week’s wins included a huge 4-1 upset of Hatboro that saw Parkins fan 16 and allow just one hit. She struck out 16 in a 4-0 win over Cheltenham and 17 in the Indians’ 4-3 win over Christopher Dock in 11 innings.
“A casual observer would see her striking out people and you don’t really pay attention to it until you start seeing the K’s rack up,” Hughes said. “It’s so exciting what she’s doing, but you don’t pay attention to it until afterwards, and you go back and look and realize it was 16 strikeouts, 17 strikeouts. It’s just how she pitches.”
“As a team, it really brought us together at a point in the season when we had to come together. It helped us gain confidence. Our hitting came in line with our pitching because as a team you get more confident. Really, she sparked a lot of different things for us. It’s just a confidence booster for everybody, herself included.”
By routinely accumulating double-digit strikeouts, Parkins has taken the pressure off the Indians’ young defense.
“She’s putting us in situations where there are just a couple of plays they have to make, and they’re working to make those plays because they see what she’s doing,” Hughes said. “It builds the confidence of a young team and shows them what they’re capable of.”
American Conference
Although four teams are mathematically in the hunt for the conference crown, the race to the finish line in the American Conference might be easier to call than the other two, but in a season of upsets, don’t assume that Wissahickon – which appears to be the odds-on favorite – is home free.
Wissahickon boasts an 8-2 record in SOL play and has just two conference games remaining. On Thursday, the Trojans will host Upper Dublin, and on Monday, they will travel to Cheltenham. Their two opponents boast just four league wins between them.
Upper Merion is 6-3 after its loss to the Trojans on Tuesday. The Vikings will travel to Plymouth Whitemarsh on Thursday and, on Monday, will host Upper Moreland. On Tuesday, Upper Merion will travel to Upper Dublin.
Norristown is 8-3 in conference play with only one league game remaining against PW on Monday. Norristown has non-league games scheduled against Central Bucks West on Friday, Harry S. Truman on Tuesday and Upper Perkiomen on Thursday.
Plymouth Whitemarsh is 6-4 but has the opportunity to move up in the standings. The Colonials will travel to Upper Merion on Thursday and then will travel to Norristown on Monday.
Mintz an unsung hero – Rachel Mintz, according to coach Heather Boyer, has been an outstanding second baseman for Upper Dublin, but when starting pitcher Kristin Ganderton was sidelined with an injury, Mintz was pressed into emergency duty on the mound.
“When I move her around, it puts a big hole at second base, but she has been a kid this year that whatever I ask of her she will do it,” Boyer said. “She has been an outstanding team leader and does whatever is asked.
“She sets the tone for the underclassmen and teaches them to be team players. It doesn’t matter what her individual statistics are going to be – she’s willing to do this for the betterment of the team. I really admire her leadership. It’s been really important.”
Mintz pitched a win over Cheltenham last Friday – one of only two league wins on the season for the Flying Cardinals.
“She’s a nice pitcher, but she’s played other positions for us,” Boyer said. “She throws here and there to stay loose, and when I needed her to step up last week, she’s done so without any question or without any hedging. She said, ‘I know we’re having a rough season, and I want to help the team move forward. Tell me how to help this team do better.’ That’s pretty profound. That’s a lot for an 18-year-old to say.”
Mintz is one of those athletes, according to her coach, that isn’t concerned about the spotlight.
“Because we haven’t been doing as well, we’re the team that gets a little blurb at the bottom of the paper where it says basically the score,” Boyer said. “Kids don’t get a lot of recognition because we’re not playing that well.
“Regardless, Rachel works hard every day. She’s kind of been the unsung hero the last two years because there were other standout kids on our team, and she would come in and do her job and do it well, but I had other kids who took the limelight. This year she’s really stepped up and worked hard at whatever aspect I’ve asked her to do.
“A lot of kids would cash it in and be self-centered, but Rachel isn’t that way. She works hard – not because she cares about her own success but because she wants the other kids to benefit in the future.”
Boyer, for one, hasn’t been surprised to see Mintz display such positive leadership.
“I have her in class this year as well, and the Rachel Mintz I knew in ninth grade and the Rachel Mintz I know now is a completely different person and for all the right reasons,” said Boyer, who teaches anatomy and physiology. “She has matured so well, not only as a softball player but as a student-athlete.
“She’s done a great job, and there’s a lot the younger players can learn from her.”
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