Scott Swanson
Katie Virtue and Emily Marchbanks were named co-Most Valuable Players for the Sweet Home softball team at an awards pizza feed Thursday, May 30.
First-year Coach Gary Barr cited their play on the field and leadership as the reasons for selecting the two.
“I couldn’t make a decision,” he said.
Virtue batted .623 in league and committed no errors in her center-fielder position, while Marchbanks finished the season with a .154 ERA and batted .454 in league. Both are juniors.
Most Improved, the team’s other general award, went to sophomore left-fielder Sierra Thayer, who was batting .230 at mid-season and finished the league season with a .452 batting average. She also made what Barr said was “the most spectacular catch of the season,” a diving layout snag of a fly ball that made a critical difference in an important game.
Seniors Hailey Hummer and Megan Graville were four-year letter winners, while Virtue earned her third letter. Earning their second-year letters were Thayer, Natalie Thorpe, Caytlin Gillespie, McKenzie Cochran, Emily Marchbanks, Nicole Bell and Kacie Mauch. First-year letter winners were Shantel Pitts, Molly Dadey, Kelli Fanning and Kaitlyn Lucero.
Barr said he took over a team that was “at a high level when I got here” and which he hopes to take to an even higher level.
The Huskies finished 17-9 overall and 9-6 in a league that proved more competitive than he expected, he said.
“Sisters turned out to be very tough this year,” Barr said.
He noted some of the Huskies’ big wins – over Yamhill-Carlton in an eastern Oregon tournament during spring break, over Stayton, and a 5-2 victory over Newport, which ended up in the final four of the 4A playoffs. They also had a “nice win” at Sisters.
In a 6-0 play-in win over Douglas, Sweet Home played “one of our better games of the season,” he said and then followed that up with a 2-1 loss to a defensively powerful Henley team in the first round that “could have gone either way.”
“That defensive team could play at the 6A level,” he said. “We played them very close and lost by one run.”
Barr, who has been an individual coach as well as former coach of Western Mennonite, said the emphasis this year was on skill-building and credited his players with “thousands” of repetitions in drills to develop their playing abilities. He said the Huskies “made a lot of progress” going through a professional hitting scheme he learned from former San Francisco Giants catcher Steve Decker.
It showed in their team batting average, which improved from .287 midway through the season to .323 at the end of the league schedule. They got better at keeping their bats down and handling tricky pitches, he said.
Their errors dropped from an average of three to four per game at mid-season to one to two by the end.
With more time, they would have been even better, he said.
“There’s only so much you can do in a couple of hours,” Barr said.
He thanked Jimmy Hagle and Shane Cochran, both of whom contributed significant effort in assisting with coaching and fixing up the varsity field, which got three tons of Turface, a clay-based soil conditioner and modifier that allows water to drain more quickly, a new scoreboard built by Hagle, a new field tarp and new fencing provided through some of Cochran’s contacts.
Barr said he discovered that Sweet Home was a “generous, giving community” with “the most dedicated teachers and administrators I’ve ever experienced.”
He also credited parents, saying the team “traveled well” with more than two-thirds of the parents making the trips to away games – even those far away.
Also, he said, he was impressed by the players’ behavior.
“These were the highest-character players I’ve ever coached,” he said. “Here’s proof: I did not hear one curse word all season. I coached two years at Western Mennonite and I can’t even say that about Western Mennonite.”
To improve, Barr said, the Huskies need to focus on more skill development and “increase your dedication to the sport” through playing on off-season teams, working on physical conditioning or taking lessons.
He cited Sweet Home’s wrest-ling and music programs as examples in which a sizable number of the participants work year-round to develop their skills.
“Fall is a great time to play softball,” he said. “It’s a short season and there’s lots of teams that need players at that time of the year.”
The biggest goal for next year, Barr said, is to improve the junior varsity field, adding dugouts, Turface, fencing and an overhead screen between the JV and varsity fields to protect spectators.
Having two quality fields, he said, would enable the Huskies to host their own tournaments, such as during spring break.
The future looks bright, he and JV Coach Maggie Banta suggested.
Banta reported that her team finished 14-1 in league, playing 14 players, nine of whom were freshmen.
“We’ve got some pretty good athletes coming up and coming back,” Barr said.