Sean C. Morgan
At the heart of this year’s Sweet Home softball team, currently ranked eighth in the state with an 12-2 record, are four seniors who have played on the varsity since they were freshmen and have been together since seventh grade.
They really go farther back than that. Tasha Saunders and Shelbey Gillespie started playing together in the fourth grade, while Ashley Cochran and Bayli Riggs have been playing together since T-ball.
The four haven’t always seen the success the Huskies are experiencing right now. Playing on the same American Softball Association team in the seventh grade, they didn’t do too well, they said; but as eighth-graders, their team won all but one or two tournaments and finished the year second in the state.
In high school, they made it to the first round of state playoffs as freshmen, then missed state their sophomore year. Their junior year, they reached the second round of state playoffs.
This year, the team combines strength and speed. Two weeks ago, with bases loaded by the Huskies’ agile base-stealing kleptomaniacs, one of them Cochran, Riggs pounded the ball over the fence to bring them all home in a grand slam.
Cochran’s dad, Shane, and Saunders’ father, Sandy, put together the seventh-grade traveling team with Lebanon and Sweet Home girls; but they weren’t that great out of the gate. They had some issues to overcome before success came.
“I didn’t want to play because I didn’t like sliding in the dirt,” Cochran said, although that’s one of her main jobs now. She started playing at a young age on her father’s team.
“Ashley was terrible,” Saunders said.
“We didn’t even like each other because we thought the other was stuck up,” Cochran said.
But they are all competitive, and that helped seal a bond among them, leading to the exceptional year they are experiencing now.
Cochran started turning her game around in ASA softball, she said. The level of competition was different from what she had known.
Saunders started playing on her dad’s team when she was 5, she said. “I only liked it because I got to play with the boys. Then I hated it when I had to play with the girls.”
Pitching kept her interested in the game, she said. She pitched from the fourth grade to her sophomore year, trading the circle with Riggs until sidelined by an injury. Saunders moved to first base the following year, when Megan Graville joined the squad.
Gillespie said she was exposed to the game at a young age.
“When I was real little, my parents were on a co-ed softball team,” she said. She watched them pitch and catch. “Softball, overall, it was fun to watch my parents play.”
She started watching players like Jenny Finch and Lisa Fernandez on TV, and she was hooked, she said. “I thought, that’s what I want to do.”
She started catching and hasn’t stopped.
Riggs’ mother and other family members played, and that made her want to play too, she said. “I just didn’t want to be the cheerleader. All the girls with pink bows – that’s not me.”
“Me and Bayli are complete opposites,” Cochran said. “I did cheerleading one time. They make fun of me all the time for it.”
The four have grown close on and off the field. On the field, this year’s team is their best ever.
“I think this year, we’ve learned to play as a team,” Cochran said.
In the past, the team has been too timid, too afraid to make mistakes, Gillespie said, but the players have learned.
“One mistake isn’t going to change the game,” Cochran said.
The team has no cliques and no drama, Saunders said.
“This is the first year without it,” Cochran said. “People had to grow up. People had to take different positions.”
“I think it’s our maturity,” Riggs said, as she looked back across the past four years.
“I think this is the best team I’ve ever played on,” Cochran said.
The seniors specialize in a variety of skills that is reflected throughout the roster – speed and heavy hitting.
This team can do everything, Cochran said.
The fast players are unorthodox bunters, bunting on two strikes, when a foul becomes an out, to get on base. They’re followed by the big hitters.
“It helps to have that depth,” Gillespie said.
“We’ve played teams that aren’t necessarily bad,” Cochran said, but they just never know what the Huskies will do.
Against a team like Regis, which beat the Huskies 7-0 in their season opener, as they got off to a slow start with seven of their first eight games cancelled due to weather, playing small ball helped big-time in the second meeting between the two teams, which Sweet Home won 3-2 in nine innings.
They all have a weak point, Cochran said. “It’s just that we can do so much more.”
Some days, Riggs is hitting the ball over the fence, and on others, the team relies on its speed and agility, Coach Steve Hummer said. On days when it’s all clicking, “we have somebody on the plate, one through nine, that is capable of hurting the other team. We haven’t had that. The depth makes it special.”
The team fields two pitchers and faces each league team three times, Hummer said. The other teams never know what they’ll be facing, Graville high and inside or Riggs outside, dropping away.
“It’s just been very effective,” Hummer said, and these seniors have made sacrifices for the team to make sure of it. Riggs shares pitching time with Graville.
Everyone can play different positions, Saunders said, and everyone is willing to make the sacrifice for the team.
Saunders did it, moving from first base to the outfield this year to balance the positions around the field.
“They’ve been able to come together as a team and make sacrifices,” Hummer said.
One of the big exceptions to the team’s flexibility is behind the plate because it doesn’t need it.
Gillespie, who only catches, has thrown out half of the opponents attempting a steal this year, Hummer said. “She’s tough as nails at the plate.”
Their youth team coaches, Cochran and Saunders, prepared the girls, with the same mindset as Hummer.
“Winning is everything,” Cochran said, although that also includes losing well. The goal of every game is to win.
“If we do lose,” Gillespie said. “It’s not the end of the world.”
“Hummer’s down our throats,” Saunders said, but assistant coach Chris Hiaasen balances that.
“You can be so upset with Hummer, and she’ll be like, ‘It’s OK, he’ll get over it in like five minutes.’”
“We constantly process it, while he’s moved on to 50 million other things,” Gillespie said. Hiaasen helps them move on too.
And they learn from it.
Now they analyze and strategize, Hummer said, instead of beating themselves up. They play aggressively all the time. To date, the team has stolen 75 bases on 78 attempts.
Both coaches are teachers and know what’s going on with the players on and off the field, Saunders said. “They’re like people we can trust.”
They’re like another set of parents, Gillespie said.
Off the field, “all four of us are probably our best friends,” Cochran said. They spend all summer every summer together playing softball, she said.
While they don’t know how feasible it will be, the group is hoping to move on to college ball together. They have all had talks with Chemeketa Community College. Attending the same college or not, they all are interested in healthcare.
Cochran is planning to attend Chemeketa to earn an associate’s degree in nursing and then transfer to Oregon Health Sciences University, where she will specialize in pediatric nursing.
Saunders wants to attend Oregon Institute of Technology and become an ultrasound technician.
Gillespie is hoping to play at Chemeketa, but if not, she plans to attend Oregon State University and study sports and exercise science.
Riggs is undecided. She has switched her goals among five different schools, and she keeps switching what she hopes to do, but she’s leaning toward ultrasound technology. She said she definitely will pursue something in the medical field.
“They’re good kids,” Hummer said. Four years together, “some of that time has been wonderful, awesome, and sometimes it’s been a headache.”
Through all of life’s twists and turns, “they’ve always been together, stuck together,” he said.
They’ve always done well individually, Hummer said, but they’ve never been able to get it all working together so well until this year.
“They’ve done a really good job, and I’m really proud of them,” Hummer said. The team has been so young for the past few years, it’s odd to have such a mature group of players.
“It’s been five to six years of hard work,” Hummer said. These four seniors have earned it, and they’re leading a group of girls who have grown in the same competitive environment.
All of the starters have at least 100 games of experience outside of high school, Hummer said. “They’re not intimidated by a softball game.”