By BAKER ELLIS / Sports Editor

CALERA – Since Robert McCrackin took over the Calera softball program in 2007 the Lady Eagles have been consistently one of the top teams in the county. Calera has time and again made appearances in the regional tournament over the last nine seasons, and routinely wins more than 20 games a year. Last year, in 2015, Calera finished with a 22-13 record, but did not advance out of the area for the first time in recent memory. This season, with almost the entire starting lineup returning, McCrackin is hopeful his group can make another playoff push.

“We only lost two seniors off of last year’s team,” McCrackin said in a March 1 interview. “The only starter we lost was our pitcher, Emily Sanders. I’m looking for a good season this year, I have three seniors starting and the rest of my girls are ninth or 10^th graders. I look for us to be good, but we’re still young.”

The underhand pitching motion used in softball is a much more natural throwing motion than is the overhand baseball cousin, and therefore softball teams can ride an individual pitcher for the majority of a season. Thompson, for example, did this last season when Haley Crumpton threw 46 of the Lady Warriors’ 51 games. This makes good softball pitchers an incredibly important commodity, and losing one can be tough to bounce back from. The loss of Sanders from last season’s team is tough for Calera in the way losing any senior starter is tough, but the Lady Eagles are fortunate to have Ashlynn Hamm stepping into the starting role.

“She’s going to be good,” McCrackin said. “She’s young and she throws hard. She needs some work on her off-speed stuff, but she’s working at it. You can see improvement even from the first week of the season with her change-up and other pitches.”

Through six games this year, Hamm has pitched all but 2.1 innings for the Lady Eagles as they have amassed a 3-2-1 record through March 1.

As far as the offense is concerned, Calera will once again rely on the bat of Charley Clark to lead way from the plate. Clark, now a sophomore, has been starting for Calera since she was a seventh grader. She has batted above .400 in each season since she has been on the varsity team, including a .471 clip a season ago, according to McCrackin, and is capable of providing immediate offense at any moment.

Somer Roberson and Shelby Wright are back for their senior seasons at first and third base, respectively. The two, along with centerfielder Skyler Laird, make up the only seniors on this team, and have all been starting on the varsity team since they were eighth graders. Some of the other pieces for McCrackin, including left fielder Kenyah Speigner, are very young, but have already seen varsity reps.

That’s how McCrackin is usually forced to run his team. He brings girls into starting roles before most other coaches would, usually out of necessity, and hopes to reap the rewards of that decision when his players are older. Between Roberson, Wright and Laird this year, the three have 12 years of varsity experience. That experience coupled with the talent evident in some of the younger players is the type of formula McCrackin has tried to implement in his time at Calera.

“It makes a big difference,” McCrackin said. “Our record wasn’t as good when they (Roberson, Wright and Laird) were eighth or ninth graders. By necessity I had to do it, and I was counting on years like this year.”

As far as the expectations McCrackin has for this year and what he hopes his 2016 team can accomplish, he just wants to avoid elimination as long as possible.

“The main thing I preach to them is we’re going to take it one game at a time,” he said. “If we do the fundamental things right, we’ll be fine. Last year we had a good record, but it was kind of a disappointment. We want to make sure we advance this year. As long as we advance, where we get first or second in the area, we have a chance to keep advancing. We don’t ever want to be eliminated.”