SKOWHEGAN — Depending on who you ask, you’ll get a different answer when you ask a member of the Skowhegan Area High School softball team to cite the moment the season turned around. All agree it was around midseason, when the handful of seniors and the large group of underclassmen that make up the Indians roster became a real team, and that led to the turnaround that led Skowhegan to this point, playing for a regional championship.
In the playoffs, Skowhegan, the No. 6 seed, has already knocked off a pair of higher-seeded teams, No. 3 Bangor and No. 2 Oxford Hills.
“We’re doing the little things well,” coach Lee Johnson said. “The big thing is, we’re not compounding one mistake with another. Definitely, the last two games are the best softball we’ve played as a whole.”
Skowhegan, now 11-7, will face No. 4 Edward Little (13-5) in the Class A North championship game at 6:30 p.m., Tuesday at Cony High School in Augusta.
Johnson returned just three seniors and two juniors this season, a far cry from the experienced team that won the Class A state title in 2014. With five sophomores and eight freshmen, the team knew it had some young talent. It underestimated the growing pains it would feel early in the season.
“At the beginning of the season, we knew (the young players) were really good. We thought we’d do better than we did,” senior second baseman Eliza Bedard said.
Skowhegan went 3-5 over the first eight games of the season. Some of the struggles were do to what was simply a tough schedule. Four of those first eight games were against teams that went on to finish in the top five in the region. Some of the struggles came from inexperience and nerves. Errors and mistakes led to a few lopsided losses. The low point was a 16-3 loss to Oxford Hills on May 9. That loss dropped Skowhegan’s record to 3-5.
“In the first four innings, we had three or four walks and three or four errors, to go with their hits,” Johnson said. “Before we knew it, we were getting beat up already and we never recovered.”
It was around that time the team leaders organized a team dinner and sleepover. It gave the newcomers and veterans a chance to really get to know each other.
“We played games and talked. We had fun together,” Bedard said. “That’s when we started winning.”
Skowhegan followed the loss to Oxford Hills with a road game at Brewer. Before that game, the Indians decided they weren’t cheering enough. When they took on the Witches, a 4-2 Skowhegan win, they turned up the volume.
“We decided to be really annoying and loud,” freshman pitcher/center fielder Sydney Ames said.
The Brewer win kicked off a five-game win streak. As the wins came, the younger players became more comfortable, and the mistakes which plagued Skowhegan in the first half of the season became rarer occurrences. An error now didn’t set off a chain reaction of jangling nerves.
“I’m definitely not as nervous anymore,” Ames said. “I just focus on getting the out, and hitting the ball.”
In Saturday’s rematch with Oxford Hills, an 8-3 Skowhegan win, the Indians were sharp. Ames struck out 12 and scattered seven hits without a walk. Skowhegan had nine hits, and the entire team was focused on hitting line drives, Bedard said.
“We knew coming into it we had to have one of our best games. I don’t think we had more than two popups,” Bedard said.
No matter what happens in Tuesday’s regional final, Bedard knows her senior season has lasted longer than she expected.
“We’ve gone very, very much further,” Bedard said. “We didn’t know how this younger team would do. It’s done pretty well.”
Travis Lazarczyk — 861-9242
<URL destination=””>tlazarczyk@centralmaine.com
</URL>Twitter: @TLazarczykMTM
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