Softball: Plainfield East aiming to return to winner's circle

PLAINFIELD – The children’s board game Chutes and Ladders is fun, especially when you keep climbing the ladders to the top.

The Plainfield East softball program is doing just that, increasing its win total each of the past four seasons and reaching a program-best
25-10 campaign a year ago. That equals 70 wins over the past three seasons.

But coach Chris Morris and the Bengals aren’t counting. Instead, they are about winning championships.

“Every year, we try to do the same things we’ve done in the past to try and prepare ourselves to do well in the conference and play our best heading into the state tournament,” said Morris, who is 152-96 entering his eighth season.

Plainfield East failed to win a championship for the first time in three years last season after capturing regional (2015) and Southwest Prairie Conference (2016) titles the previous two seasons. Getting back to the winner’s circle is one of many goals for 2018.

“Our team goals are to win conference, stay confident in ourselves and everybody else on the team,” senior third-year varsity player Gina Followell said. “We need to believe we can do it, and we will.”

“We have a tough conference, but we have the talent to compete,” senior catcher Callie Dutton said. “We have to keep working hard so we can be playing our best heading into the regional and sectional.”

That means continued improvement and building on past success.

“If we work hard together as a team, I have really high hopes for us,” senior third-year varsity player Amberly Rodriguez said. “If we have confidence in each other, I know we can make it far this year.”

“Softball is a mental game, so you have to be confident and believe in your teammates to reach your goals,” senior returnee Kayley Perkins said.

Seniors Rodriguez, Dutton, Followell and Perkins and juniors Lauren Urbanski and Abbey Smith make up the Bengals’ core. Urbanski has been on the varsity team since freshman year. Smith could be out for the season because of an injury.

“The players who have been on the varsity before need to raise the bar individually and grow as they go along,” Morris said. “They’ve done an awesome job with that so far this year and over the years. If they continue to do that, we’ll be fine.”

“We’ve been here for a long time,” Rodriguez said of the core group of returnees. “We have a talented group of girls here, and since we’ve been playing together for a while, it’s going to make it fun for us this year. I’m excited for that.”

Rodriguez, a Northern Illinois University recruit, led the Bengals with a .407 average and 46 hits a season ago. Perkins scored a team-best 39 runs, Dutton, who will attend Clarke University in the fall, was among the team leaders with three homers and eight doubles, and Urbanski struck out only eight times in 115 plate appearances.

Followell, a Concordia University recruit who also will see time in the outfield, went 9-0 with a 1.88 ERA in the circle in 2017. Junior lefty Alyssa Dyhr, who has committed to Toledo, also will see action in the circle.

“Gina is a jack-of-all-trades and will be in the lineup, while Alyssa pitched a decent amount of innings last year and is prepared to have a very good season this year,” Morris said. “I feel good about our pitching staff and Kallie behind the plate.”

The Bengals could be offensively challenged, trying to overcome losing 35 of 42 home runs and 65 percent of the RBI production from a year ago.

“One thing we’ll be working hard on is our offense,” Morris said. “We lost our 3 and 4 hitters who combined to hit 20-plus home runs. I think we have good offensive players coming back and a good lineup. But we need to find girls who will step their game up to another level to help our offense a little bit.”

Senior Kaitlin Novak also returns, while seniors Sydney Murph (Calumet College) and Briana Waughop are new to the program. Juniors Rachel Barrientos, Amber Blakney, Jessica Bulanda, Brooke Carlson, Josie Nemeth, Emmalee Randazzo and Emily Willingham and sophomore Emily Kruegel round out the roster.

“There is a lot of pressure because there are really good teams out there,” Perkins said. “We just have to have a lot of confidence, keep working hard, keep practicing hard and we’ll have a good season.”

A good run in the rugged SPC will prepare any team for the rigors of the state tournament.

“Our conference gets tougher and tougher every year,” Morris said. “It’s brutal. There are no easy outs in our conference.”