Youth and errors headline season for Lamar softball
The 2019 Lamar High School softball team.
By Drake Horton
Contributing Writer
As head coach Chris Weaver heads into his second season coaching the Lamar Lady Silver Foxes softball team, he is doing so with a very young team, and with youth comes some hiccups.
“We make way too many errors for the girls that we have and we have to cut those out if we are going to compete with anybody,” Weaver said.
While this team is young, there are returning players and Weaver is hoping that these returning players have had a chance to grow some in the game, hoping that it will help lead to fewer errors, but he knows that is not a guarantee.
“Obviously, the girls are getting a little bit older, so hopefully they are a little more seasoned, but sometimes that doesn’t make them any better if they don’t have the ‘want to’ to get better. They have to have the desire. … If we can cut down on our errors as a team we will be OK.”
When asked what he believes is the cause of the errors, Weaver is not able to pinpoint one significant factor. “It could be age, it could be mental block, it could be nerves, you never know,” Weaver said.
Between four eighth-graders, two freshmen and three sophomores while having only one senior, the future has the potential to be bright as he and his staff are going to have plenty of time to work together with these young players.
“On our varsity right now we have four eighth-graders that are starters and with that youth it goes along with three sophomores and one senior,” Weaver said. “Once we lose that one senior in the next couple of years we will be ready.”
A lot of that youth comes on the mound as Weaver has three pitchers who are sophomores or younger. “My two pitchers are both sophomores, so we have three more years with them and then I have an eighth-grader that is a pitcher, too,” Weaver said. “We have depth, we just have to get where we don’t have to rely on our youth to cause problems. We just have to be ready to go when our time is called.”
Last year Lamar came in third in the region behind Lewisville and McBee, but Lewisville has moved up to 2A so now all in the Lady Silver Foxes’ way of a region championship are the Lady Panthers. Still, Weaver says there is only one way to win the region and that is to cut down on errors. “We’re scoring runs, we’re hitting the ball well, but we just continue to make errors that keep us out of games. If we just cut half of them down we will be in most of the games that we play.”
