Softball season swings into play
The spring season for NPHS girls’ softball swung into play at a home game against Oak Park High School on Feb. 16. Bryan Matney, the varsity coach, and Mark Gralmick, the JV coach, worked with their teams to prepare for the spring season.
Gralmick said he is excited to get out onto the dirt and watch the girls improve as players and as people. “My goal as a coach is to not just make them better players but to hopefully help them become more aware of what they’re capable of,” Gralmick said.
At the start of each game, different emotions come to the players and this season has special importance to the upperclassmen players who used to play with the late Coach Dagan. For Kaitlyn Larson, senior on the varsity team, her adrenaline rises as she warms up and cheers on the rest of her team.
“For a lot of us seniors there’s a lot of meaning that goes into [the games]. With coach Dagan’s passing earlier this school year, it puts a lot more meaning into the games, especially home games, they’re very powerful for us,” Larson said.
This is Lauren Calverley’s first year playing softball for NPHS. She is a freshman on the frosh-soph team and was welcomed into her first season by an unexpected hail storm. “We’ve already had two games and we won one but one got canceled,” Calverly said. “The hail hurt a lot, it was really cold but when it started actually hailing, we just called it off.”
High school teams allow players to gain life long friendships with teammates and become closer. “I think these friendships are going to grow with me as I get older and I’m going to have them for the rest of my life and have this support system that I know I can turn to,” Larson said. “These are friends that I know I want to be with on and off the field and that’s something that I very much value.”
Softball is more than just a sport for many of the players and coaches integrate their own principles into the game. “There’s a lot of life lessons to be learned from softball. I just hope that the girls are having fun and accomplishing what they set out to accomplish,” Gralmick said. “Everything looks on target; I think this is gonna be an exciting season and we have an opportunity to do some really good things.”
