This story originally appeared in the June 9 edition of the weekly LINK Reader. To get these stories first, subscribe at linknky.com/subscribe.
It was early March. Winter was on the way out and senior Kathryn McLagan was in a quandary. Mere weeks from the start of the season in her last year on the Villa Madonna softball team, there were just six players in uniform under new head coach Tony Fields.
“We were really nervous we weren’t going to have a team,” McLagan said.
McLagan, a third baseman, was joined on the preseason roster by shortstop Emma Adams, centerfielder Chloe Cotton, first baseman Catherine Gibbs, pitcher Cam Kratzer and catcher Rosemary Rice. That’s it.
At the time, there were almost as many Villa Madonna coaches as players. Including Fields, a 36-year coaching veteran in three sports at six high schools, there were five softball coaches.
“My four assistants poured everything they had into this team,” said Fields, formerly the softball coach at Cooper. “Those four did yeomen’s work.”
Here’s their story.
As the calendar flipped from February to March, Fields, his daughter Peyton Fields, Peyton’s former Cooper High School teammate Hayley Van Dusen, Jen Meyers and Mike Greer had a lot to give and hardly anybody to give it to. Having the smallest coach-to-player ratio in program history wasn’t exactly what Fields had in mind when he took the job.
Something had to be done and it had to be done fast. The season was slated to begin March 27.
“We started looking for players. We got a few. We eventually got five,” said McLagan, the lone upperclassman on a team that wound up with no juniors, four sophomores, four freshmen, one eighth-grader and a seventh-grader.
The coach was obviously pleased the roster nearly doubled in size for the opener.
“We wound up getting five really good girls,” Fields said. “None of them had played softball before. One of them had never even seen a softball game. The numbers changed the way I coached. We couldn’t go all out in things like sliding drills in practice because I didn’t want anybody to get hurt in a fluke accident and lose a girl. When we had three straight days of practice or games, we gave them a day off.”
Rounding out the improbable 11 were Olley Gray, Hallee Greer, Elena Martinez, Grace Reynolds and Madyson Ross. The coaches taught Greer how to play second base. Gray, Reynolds and Ross rotated around Cotton in the outfield. Martinez picked up the game after receiving a crash course.
“Olley Gray is very young,” said McLagan, heading to Mercer University with academic scholarships. “I thought one of the best things we had was the big sister-little sister idea. Olley was my little sister on the team, and I wanted to help her so much.”
Villa Madonna took on Dayton in the season-opening Ninth Region All “A” Classic Tournament with the semblance of a team. Then the season threw Fields a curveball. Villa Madonna beat Dayton, 9-5. In game three, Villa Madonna beat Newport, 32-11.
That’s not a misprint.
“We had a rag-tag team with a bunch of girls who were very inexperienced and we scored in double figures (14 times),” Fields said of his holdovers and quick-learning newcomers. “We were fourth in the state in hitting with a .434 batting average.”
That’s also not a misprint.
“What we did was amazing,” McLagan said. “We became really close and we became successful. I never dreamed we’d make the regional tournament again.”
Fields and his dreamers led the team to a 13-12 record, 7-3 against 34th District competition. The Vikings got better as the season moved along, winning six of their final eight regular season games. They put together a district tournament win over Lloyd and earned a berth in the Ninth Region tournament for the third straight season before getting eliminated in the first round by eventual champion Highlands for the second year in a row.
Six Vikings hit .438 or better on the season. Kratzer ranked 23rd in the state with a .575 batting average and went 9-8 in the circle with a 3.65 ERA. Adams ranked 40th statewide at .543. Rice hit .521. McLagan hit .482. Reynolds hit .438 her first year playing the game. The Vikings led the state with 11.4 runs per contest. They ranked eighth with 161 stolen bases, led by Adams’ 28.
“Hitting is all about having confidence. I really believe a lot of it is mental,” Fields said. “Part of that is having fun, no matter what. I’m a rah-rah guy. And this was as enjoyable a year as I’ve had in all my years of coaching.”
