Ken Adkins didn’t know what he had coming into the season.
The Independence head coach graduated eight starters from a team that went to the state tournament in 2019. That left him with a bunch of younger players that never played at the high school level before. He heard he would have a good pitcher coming up, but he didn’t know exactly what he was getting.
Over 330 strikeouts later, he now knows exactly what he has.
“You always hear when you have good kids coming up,” Adkins said. “I heard all the time about the group that graduated in 2019, but you never really know until they get there. That’s always good, but I want to know if they live in the gym and if they live at the field. I was told years ago by her pitching coach Jerry (Johnson) that she’d be good, but you just never know until you get them here and see them in action.”
The pitcher in question is sophomore Delaney Buckland.
At first glance she may not look like much – barely coming in at 5-foot-2 – but she plays bigger than her stature. Playing in her first season at the high school level after the pandemic wiped out her freshman year, she compiled a state-leading 336 strikeouts to go along with 22 wins and a 2.37 ERA.
Those numbers weren’t compiled against a bunch of chumps either. Of the 11 other teams playing the state tournament this coming week, Buckland has faced six of them.
As impressive as her numbers are to this point, there were some bumps in the road. Her career started out in smooth waters, as she yielded just three runs and won her first four starts but the tide quickly turned.
The first loss came in her fourth game when St. Albans lit her up for 12 runs in a 12-2 loss. The next start, a 7-3 loss to Greenbrier East, wasn’t much better. She rebounded with a 5-1 win over Class A tournament qualifier Petersburg, but followed with losses to Washington (12-4) and Point Pleasant (10-6).
“I thought we learned a lot during that stretch,” Adkins said. “St. Albans throttled us the first time we played. I thought we were intimidated and we were beat when we got off the bus. We didn’t rise to the occasion. But it was a learning experience for us. We went back to the drawing board after that stretch and made some changes in how we called pitches, what pitches we threw and what we wanted to do.
“I’ve never really had a pitcher like Delaney. Before I had Savannah (Bragg) and we always asked her for 15 groundballs and maybe four or five strikeouts. It was all about location. Delaney was a different pitcher and that took some getting used to for me. She’s a pitcher that has all the pitches, can hit 60 and blow it by you and can attack hitters differently. Me, her and (catcher) Kaylen (Parks) had to sit down and talk about what we wanted to do. I told her what I expect from her and she told me what she needed from me.”
The stretch was rough on Buckland who was trying to find her footing. A more aggressive pitcher that wanted to attack hitters and get them behind in the count early, she needed to relay her expectations to Adkins.
“It was stressful,” Buckland said. “I knew I could be a much better pitcher than that. I knew we all needed to get on the same page and he knew that too. So we just sat down and we would talk about things after games and Kaylen and I would talk about it too. So finally we started to get into a groove and he started to learn who I was and now I’m really happy with what we’re doing.
“I think talking just helped us out. In the beginning I think he thought he could do what he did with Savannah and we were different players. We would just talk after games and figure it out.”
The results largely culminated on May 1.
The Lady Patriots dropped matchups to Nitro and three-time defending state champion Herbert Hoover, both in extra innings, but it was a taste of how good Buckland could be.
In five innings she shut Nitro out, holding the Wildcats to just one hit before she was pulled with her team up 4-0. Nitro came back to win 6-4 in nine innings, but Buckland was efficient in her next performance just minutes later against Hoover. She held the Huskies to two runs through eight innings before they finally broke through in the ninth, winning 5-2.
“I was really nervous about those games,” Buckland said. “I mean they were two of the top teams in the state. Hoover had won multiple championships. But when I went out there and I was pitching and doing well against a team like that, I thought to myself ‘I’ve got this!’ and that kind of helped me figure it out.”
“Our kids played great ball that day,” Adkins said. “We played 18 innings and lost both games on walk-off home runs. We did all the things we wanted to see. When we left, me and Mike (Horton) talked on the bus that day and thought we might be better than we thought.”
Those two games capped a 2-7 stretch for Indy.
Since then Buckland has been terrific, pitching nine shutouts.
Still, her progress has been tested twice and she’s shown improvement.
The first instance came on May 27, the final day of the regular season for Indy.
Adkins made sure to schedule St. Albans at the end to measure his team’s progress. The results were much different this time around. Buckland gave up just four hits and only one earned run in a 2-0 loss. She took a shutout into the seventh inning with the lone blemish coming on a solo home run in the final frame.
“I think part of it was trusting my field a little more behind me,” Buckland said of her improvement. “At the beginning of the season there were a lot of errors and we were young, so I knew that was going to happen but it puts a lot of pressure on you as a pitcher. But when I have a good field behind me I have a little more fun in the circle and I can worry a little less. I think the field helped a lot and got a lot better. I also think I’m not as nervous. After a couple of games I felt more comfortable.”
The second test came in the regional championship series.
In Game 2, with her team up 2-0, Buckland yielded five runs in the sixth inning, including two home runs. The next day Wyoming East opened the decisive third game by scoring a run in the top of the first to put the pressure on Buckland and test her ability to bounce back from the previous night’s dreadful inning.
“After they scored that first run in the first inning I just went and sat in the dugout,” Buckland said. “I just took a deep breath and needed to gather myself a little better. I knew I needed to give it my all and gather myself and that’s when I was able to stop them.”
Now with the state tournament slated to begin on Tuesday, Buckland will be tested again. Of the three other teams in the Class AA state tournament field, Buckland has faced two of them this year – Hoover and Sissonville. Both handed her losses this year – the aforementioned 5-2 defeat at Hoover and a 2-1 loss to Sissonville. There’s a chance she could avenge both defeats but first she’ll need to handcuff Oak Glen in the first game.
She’s ready for the challenge.
“The nerves are similar to what I had at the start of the year, but I have to put that aside,” Buckland said. “I’ve got to come out stronger now that we’re in the state tournament.”
Contact Tyler Jackson at tylerjackson@lootpress.com, call him at 304-731-5542 and follow on Twitter @tjack94