WEST POINT — Oak Hill Academy softball is gearing up for the 2024-25 season with a three-team opener event on Friday, featuring Starkville Academy and Columbus Christian Academy. The schools will play one game against each other with the first game featuring Oak Hill and CCA starting at 3 p.m.
Raiders head coach Lewis Earnest spoke plainly about the youth in his team, something he sees as an opportunity to continue the growth that he saw last season from his players.
“I feel pretty good, we’re just a young team,” he said. “We were young last year too and that should help us going forward, but we only have three seniors and two juniors. We’ve got a lot of eighth and ninth graders. Getting them the experience early is a big plus, and not having to reload so much, especially for pitching and catching.”
Raiders starting pitcher KK Pennington and catcher Mary Coker were both middle schoolers last year, starting the majority of games for the varsity team.
“KK pitched about every game for us as a seventh grader and we won 14 games, so she’s gotten pretty good, and our catcher, Mary, is only going to be a freshman now.”
One of the perks of having to start young players is by the time they’re sophomores and juniors they have more experience than many of their opponents. One of the best ways to capitalize on that experience is to play a strong non-district schedule, which Earnest hopes to do with these matchups.
The Raiders met SA twice a year ago, losing both games against a strong team coached by Mississippi Association of Coaches Hall of Famer Lee Berryhill. He was recently named the varsity baseball coach at Starkville Academy as well, but according to Athletic Director Greg Owen Berryhill took the job with assurances that he could continue coaching softball.
“Starkville Academy is always competitive. We played them twice last year and they’re always a good opponent, Coach Berryhill does a great job with them. You play these early games to get ready for district and I try to get as many as we can to get a gauge of where we’re at before the games really count.”
Because of the rain throughout the week, it became unfeasible for the games to take place at Oak Hill. The field was still holding a lot of water on Thursday and Earnest confirmed that afternoon that the games would take place elsewhere, with Starkville Academy’s turf field now set to host the games on Friday.
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