By Emma Wecker

Batavia softball won their first game of the season on April 5 against East Aurora. Their current record is now 1-9 overall and 0-3 in conference. In their most recent game on Wednesday April 17, Batavia lost 0-10 against Wheaton North.

“We’ve just been putting in more work at practices and hoping that as the season continues, we continue to grow. Hopefully we will see more progress as time goes on,” said Mackenzie Krauch, a varsity softball player.

Their pitcher, Emily Reagan, pitches about 60 pitches per game. The other pitcher is Krauch, but she is currently suffering from a shoulder injury. With that being said, freshmen Lexi Coonrod has been pulled up to play with varsity. Their starting lineup typically consists of Gwen Shouse at shortstop, Grace Sartain at third base, Bella Zagotta at second base, Reagan Payne at first base, Jordan Vander in left field, Teagan Sullivan in center field, Adrianna Platt in right field, Lilly Willuweit at catcher, and Emily Reagan at pitcher.
The batting order is Shouse, Krauch, Zagotta, Sartain, Vander, Sullivan, Reagan, Payne, Platt.

“We have some strong hitters and when we hit well we can get on bases,” Krauch said. “We need to continue working on it though because we want to see some better results.”

Against East Aurora, they scored 19 runs.

“Getting lots of runs in that game was a good confidence booster for us. We want to play like that more often against better teams,” Krauch said.

Batavia’s Head coach, Torry Pryor, was inducted into the hall of fame just recently this year. He leads the team with Jeff Sortno and Michelle Niemiec alongside him.

“They are very helpful, and give good advice,” Krauch said of the coaches. “It’s really nice to have coaches with lots of experience and attention to the game. I know that they always know what they’re talking about.”

Chicagoland Softball is very competitive. Within the class 4A state wide rankings, two teams of the Dukane Conference are listed in the top ten with St. Charles North at three and Lake Park at four. Batavia is ranked at 388 out of 401 different teams.

With 19 games left in the season, we will see if they can pull out some more wins. Their next game is on Friday April 19, which is another conference game against Geneva. As of last year Batavia lost their 15-year winning streak against Geneva in their first time playing them in conference. But the second time around they took the win and are hoping to continue the streak this upcoming Friday. Geneva is currently ranked seventh in the conference while Batavia is ranked eighth.

“It should be a good game against Geneva. We are pretty even teams so it should be very competitive,” said Krauch. “We hope to get a win and improve our record.”

Last year, Batavia only had one conference win, which was against Geneva. They had one win and one loss against them.

As time goes on we will see if Batavia softball will change anything to try and improve their record.