By Angelyce House and Nela Sedlarova

This softball player is getting some serious attention from her school and is only a junior in high school. She is  known for having red hair and being good at what she does. Being team captain and one of four people to be nominated for April’s athlete of the month as well as being team captain, she gets the responsibility of making sure her teammates don’t miss out on practices by giving out punishments such as having them run laps and more.

Grace Sartain is well known at Batavia High School. She has many friends who have said numerous great things.One thing not many people know her for is her skills in softball. Grace’s sportsmanship and leadership skills is what made her teammates want to pick her as team captain.

Not only is she the team captain of the girls’ varsity softball team as a junior, she made it as one of this month’s top athletes on Batavia High School’s Instagram account called, batavia.sab which is also known as student athlete board. Sartain has been playing on varsity for almost all three years so far, starting on JV as a freshman and then moving up to varsity by the end of the season. 

“I worked a lot on my own. That’s why I did so well,’’ Sartain said. 

Grace has played since she was little. She mentions how the beginning of her softball career started through her brothers playing baseball, putting the idea of softball into her head.  She has played in many travel teams. She has put in a lot of extra time in and out of school to get where she is now. 

“She plays three positions, and plays all three very well,” said assistant coach Bill Finucane. 

Sartain plays best at second base, third base, and center field. 

As a junior in high school she is able to keep up with school work as well as being team captain. She has many teammates that picked her in their teams “poll” on who should be team captain this year. 

“I’ve been friends with her for years and I knew that she would keep the team together and sane throughout the season so I knew I wanted her as captain,” said junior Gwen Shouse

Her coaches are laid back and all wondering what they have to say on Sartain. They took their time on our questions until one of them started to talk about his interactions with coaching softball here at Batavia High School. 

“Grace is a good example as captain, and shows great leadership skills,’’ Finucane said.

She currently has 0.682 on-base plus slugging percentage, with three doubles, one single, and three runs batted in. 

Grace is starting to get the realization that she doesn’t want to continue her softball career outside of high school and wants to spend her college years having fun being a regular freshman year where she wants to have a normal college experience. She doesn’t want the burden of having to wake up early or stay up late at night for practice and then have games making her miss classes and/or homework.

Although Sartain has been very successful with her many games and leadership skills along with the overall experience in softball, she has come to realize that she has grown out of the sport. She has begun to consider the sport to become an extra task to be finished each day. Sartain may have grown out of the sport but that isn’t stopping her from keeping a positive attitude on the field and supporting her teammates. 

‘’One of the memorable moments was beating Geneva on senior night ’’ Sartain said. 

With senior year coming around Sartain is going to make it her last but best year yet.