It wasn’t going to be an easy season for the Louisville Lady Wildcats softball team, but they were building for the future.
Head coach Ron Swart had a young team that was going to go up against some talented teams to get players ready for upcoming seasons. They especially needed to work on the young pitchers. Instead, LHS had eight games rained out in the early part of the season and played just two games and one of those two was with a dwindled roster due to the BETA club convention.
After COVID-19 ended the season altogether, it was almost a complete loss and Swart believes his team next year will feel the effects of it.
“It’s going to hurt us a lot because we were hunting young pitchers. I had several girls working on it but now we’re not getting a chance to do anything,” Swart said. “We’re going to really be staring down the eight ball because slow pitch is gone.”
On top of the fact the younger players didn’t get a chance to develop, seniors didn’t get a chance to have a proper end to their softball careers. Pitcher Jimaia Jackson and position player Kameron Rogers each saw their careers end prematurely.
The most unfortunate about the situation is that both were on the path of earning some college scholarships but needed to be seen by coaches. Swart hopes that they can still get a shot.
“For both of them, the season was to see whether they got a scholarship or not,” Swart said. “I’ve talked to some coaches and told them about them but no one could see them. One of the kids is a phenomenal athlete that can play but no one knows about her. It’s aggravating, but we’ll make it work.”
If slow pitch softball still existed within the state, the fall could be a good thing for the program provided sports would return. But LHS and the rest of Mississippi is done with slow pitch making things even more difficult for the youngsters trying to prepare for the future.
“We’re going to struggle because of pitching and that’s what this year was going to be about building that group. I had scheduled a good non-conference schedule and let our players take some lumps,” Swart said.”
“I’ve got some really good young talent, but we don’t have girls that play summer ball or anything like that. They play when it’s softball season and play basketball when it’s basketball season. Only time will tell.”
