While some of the girls teams at Sedona Red Rock High School — like volleyball and basketball — have experienced players up and down the roster, the softball team is a little different.
There are some experienced players, like seniors Bella Horton and Lesly Suarez as well as sophomores Annabelle Cook and Annalee Dearden. Other than that, there’s very little experience on the roster. But what the Scorpions lack in experience they possess in enthusiasm to learn the game and improve.
“The girls are happy to be out there and we’re happy to have them,” Cook said. “They’re excited to learn and willing to learn, which is the biggest thing for us. If they’re willing to learn, it makes it easier to teach them. And we just have fun out there.”
Sedona opened its season on Thursday, March 25 against Northland Prep Academy. The Spartans defeated the Scorpions 14-1 in a game that was rather a perfect storm against Sedona. For starters, the Spartans are a strong team that could certainly contend for a 2A Central Region title and make a long postseason run.
By contrast, the Scorpions are not only a young and relatively inexperienced team but came into that game cold. All but three of the team’s players had just begun practice that Monday, having been a part of the basketball team’s long playoff run. That included Suarez, Cook and Dearden.
And while the 14-1 final is not what anyone at Sedona was looking for, SRRHS coach John Parks pointed out that the Scorpions were one out away from allowing only one run in the first and second innings. Two-out rallies from NPA led to four- and five-run outbursts.
That, as well as the attitude of the girls on the team, gives Parks reason to believe that things will get better as the season goes on.
“I think by the end of the year it’s going to be OK,” Parks said. “It’s a short year. And it’s mostly freshmen and sophomores out there. We want to continue to try to build the program up.”
Something that will naturally come over the course of the season is mistakes. Even the most experienced players in the state will make errors on the field or swing at bad pitches. Those players, though, are experienced enough to understand that mistakes happen. Less experienced players are not only more prone to mistakes but perhaps more susceptible to being discouraged by them.
But Parks has not seen that.
“There’s no discouragement,” he said. “A lot of them are new. I’m just amazed. It can be a little scary out there sometimes in this game. But they want the ball. For the girls that are out there, the enthusiasm is fantastic. It’s unbelievable. They’re up, they’re positive, they’re having fun. They’re learning the game, they have a lot of desire.”
“They get a little upset like any player would,” added Cook. “I get upset when I make an error. But with the support of the team, they get over it. They understand that it happens and they’re new. We have to emphasize to them that a lot of them haven’t played before and that it’s OK. So they learn from it.”
From a Sedona perspective, another positive about the game is that it happened at all. Less than a week before the game, SRRHS athletic director Pedro Ortega Sr. expressed optimism that a season would happen but also noted that the team had about eight girls that would definitely play and two to three others that were on the fence.
In the intervening days, those numbers improved and by the time Opening Day rolled around, the Scorpions not only had enough numbers for a full team, but had a full team despite Suarez having to miss the game after sustaining an eye injury while playing catch in pregame warmups.
“We have 12 right now and we feel good about that, though we’d like to have more,” Parks said. “The girls did a good job of getting other girls out. And they’re just great kids. They really are. They have a great attitude and work ethic. It’s a lot of fun. Despite the score, it’s a lot of fun.”
“We’re a fun team to watch,” Cook said. “We’re a good group of girls and we’re improving every day. Look out for us.”
