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Coventry, Ohio —
As spring kicks into full gear, Coventry softball launches into its second half of its season with hopes of sustaining the consistency that witnessed a 4-0 start.
So far the season has, in a lot of ways, been start and go - a tale of two halves. After starting out white hot by winning the first four games, the Comets have gone cold winning two of its last seven.
While the record has dipped to 6-6-1, the Comets are still much improved and focusing on ensuring continued improvement.
“The goal is just to keep improving and getting better,” Coventry coach Kristen Young said. “I just told the girls this today… our goal is really just to keep moving forward.”
One of the key areas the Comets have improved since last year is the defense. After an offseason devoted to defense the Comets are making a lot less errors.
“We had a lot of errors last year,” Young said. “Pretty much you could count on us having at least one or two errors a game or as high as seven or eight, which killed us. This year the games that we win we’ve been able to cut down to zero or one errors, and that has been a big difference.”
Again though, errors have been a big reason for the games lost this year. The team has committed as many as five, six or seven errors in losses.
Young said she believes the cause is fear of letting the team down and the girls putting too much pressure on themselves to make the play, instead of just doing it.
“Physically I know every girl can make the plays, but it is just the mental part of it,” Young said.
With mental toughness as the area for most improvement, the Comets have been working through it by doing drills to increase their mental toughness since the preseason. It is still a work in progress.
“It (the drills) is helping…but we still have a ways to go too,” Young said.
Another challenge the Comets face moving forward is not getting themselves psyched out against the elite teams.
“The biggest challenge honestly will be not psyching ourselves out when we know we are going to be playing a good team or a big team name,” Young said. “I think it just really intimidates them and again it is just that mental aspect.”
Young said another one of the main goals is to win more than one game in the tournament. If they are to do that, going forward they need their bats to come alive again and strong play from some key players.
As spring kicks into full gear, Coventry softball launches into its second half of its season with hopes of sustaining the consistency that witnessed a 4-0 start.
So far the season has, in a lot of ways, been start and go - a tale of two halves. After starting out white hot by winning the first four games, the Comets have gone cold winning two of its last seven.
While the record has dipped to 6-6-1, the Comets are still much improved and focusing on ensuring continued improvement.
“The goal is just to keep improving and getting better,” Coventry coach Kristen Young said. “I just told the girls this today… our goal is really just to keep moving forward.”
One of the key areas the Comets have improved since last year is the defense. After an offseason devoted to defense the Comets are making a lot less errors.
“We had a lot of errors last year,” Young said. “Pretty much you could count on us having at least one or two errors a game or as high as seven or eight, which killed us. This year the games that we win we’ve been able to cut down to zero or one errors, and that has been a big difference.”
Again though, errors have been a big reason for the games lost this year. The team has committed as many as five, six or seven errors in losses.
Young said she believes the cause is fear of letting the team down and the girls putting too much pressure on themselves to make the play, instead of just doing it.
“Physically I know every girl can make the plays, but it is just the mental part of it,” Young said.
With mental toughness as the area for most improvement, the Comets have been working through it by doing drills to increase their mental toughness since the preseason. It is still a work in progress.
“It (the drills) is helping…but we still have a ways to go too,” Young said.
Another challenge the Comets face moving forward is not getting themselves psyched out against the elite teams.
“The biggest challenge honestly will be not psyching ourselves out when we know we are going to be playing a good team or a big team name,” Young said. “I think it just really intimidates them and again it is just that mental aspect.”
Young said another one of the main goals is to win more than one game in the tournament. If they are to do that, going forward they need their bats to come alive again and strong play from some key players.
In the first four games the Comets hit the ball from top to bottom and Young said if they are to be successful they need that rollover of the lineup to return.
Also the key players who have been playing well so far are senior shortstop Kali Stover, junior leadoff hitter Summer Clark, junior first baseman Alex Miller and junior ace pitcher Cree Daniels.
The Comets will need their continued efforts in the second half, especially from strikeout machine Daniels who they call “the beast.”
The next time the Comets will hit the diamond is at 4:15 p.m. April 23 when they travel to Streetsboro High School.
