Ron Swart and the Louisville Lady Wildcat softball team are in a bit of a rebuild in year two with Swart at the helm.
He was an assistant for the Lady Wildcats for a season before taking over the program and now Swart is putting it together how he wants it to be built.
On the negative side of things, this year’s team is lacking veteran leadership. The team has just one senior in outfielder Jamaya Jackson, he has two juniors and the rest of the team are sophomores or younger. On the flip side, it’s allowing Swart to instill what he wants out of his players at a younger age.
“We’re young,” Swart stated. “We’re definitely in a rebuild. I graduated a big group last year and we’re just going to figure it out. But I’m not trying to make a team, I’m trying to build a program and my kids have been through coach after coach. It’s really hard to build a program when you’re changing coaches so often so hopefully I can build this one up, sustain it and pass the torch to a young coach down the line that really wants to be a great softball coach.”
The Lady Wildcats will be led by Jackson in the outfield, junior shortstop Erica Murray at the leadoff spot in the lineup, first and third baseman Gabby Cistrunk as a sophomore power hitter and ninth grade second baseman Myasia Johnson.
“That’s probably my best four players and we’ll surround them with some younger players,” Swart said. “We’re going to be young and we moved into a new district this year. We were going to drop it this year and play volleyball, but they changed districts and I think we’ll be competitive and take shorter trips.”
The season began on Monday night when Louisville went on the road and took on last year’s Class I slow pitch softball state runners up, Eupora.
It was a tough night for the Lady Wildcats as they gave up nine walks and 12 hits and lost 14-0 in four innings. They had just one hit themselves offensively, but Swart thought there was some good that came from it as well.
“We knew what we were chasing when we got (to Eupora),” Swart said. “We knew we were going to be chasing it because we didn’t get to practice much and know who was going to be where. We just had to see what we had. Our infield is going to be really solid, our outfield is going to be suspect.”
With just over 80 teams left playing slow pitch softball in the state of Mississippi, Class 1A-6A has been split up into two classes. Louisville sits in a district that seems much more manageable from a playing standpoint and proximity as they play Columbus, Starkville, New Hope, Caledonia and Leake Central this year.
Louisville was set to play at home on Tuesday against Columbus and travel to play the Lady Falcons of Columbus on Thursday.
