Bluefield’s softball team will enter uncharted waters Wednesday morning.
For the first time in program history the Beavers will compete in the state tournament after consecutive years of postseason disappointment.
“Anything that happens now is icing on the cake for us,” Bluefield head coach Justin Hall said. “Our goal at the beginning of the year was to win regionals, to get to states. That was the goal – to be the first Bluefield softball team in school history to get up there. And now it’s just like we can sit back and play. We can play loose, we can play free. Keep the intensity that we’ve that we’ve been keeping, but play pressure-free softball. That’s what we’ve been preaching.”
Boasting a senior-laden squad, the Beavers are one of two relative newcomers to the double-elimination field. Herbert Hoover and Winfield, tournament veterans who have combined for the last six titles, will battle it out in the other opening game of the Class AA tournament while Bluefield will open with Keyser, a program that’s been absent from the tournament field since 2012.
The two teams will meet Wednesday at 9:45 a.m. at Little Creek Park in South Charleston on The Rock Field A. The loser will play their second game, an elimination game, at 4:45 against the loser of Winfield-Hoover. The winners of the two morning games play 30 minutes after that game concludes for a spot in Thursday’s Class AA title game.
The Golden Tornado is led by the duo of pitcher Rylee Mangold and catcher Taylor Likens.
Likens leads the state in home runs with 16, sporting a .535 batting average to go along with them. Mangold is 14-3 in the circle with a 1.24 ERA and 194 strikeouts.
They’re the clear standouts for a Keyser team that has as much experience in this spot as the Beavers.
“We’ve been watching video you know,” Hall said. “I found a couple of their games on YouTube against Weir so I have watched them and their pitcher’s stat line is pretty strong. I think she’s got like 194 strikeouts this year. They’ve played a ton more games than we have and she’s pitched quite a few innings. So I think that’s who we’ll see in Game 1. Basically what we see is she mixes in off-speed with fastball very, very well. She has a couple varying degrees of speed. It’s not just a changeup, but she has a mid-velo pitch that’s in between the changeup and a fastball that she likes to throw like a curveball. So, you know, we’ve been looking at that we’ve been trying to attack things like that in practice since last week.”
The Beavers are no slouches either.
They have six starters batting above .400 on the season, all of whom have over 10 RBI each. Richardson sisters Grace and Abby are atop that list, batting .469 and .456, respectively. Grace leads the team in home runs with four while Maddie Lawson, a first-team all-stater a year ago, boasts a team-high 34 RBIs.
Izzy Smith leads the way in the circle with a 1.72 ERA, 16-5 record and 201 strikeouts this season.
She’ll be relied on heavily throughout the state tournament run as she’s pitched all but five innings this season. That becomes extremely important depending on how the first day of the tournament shakes out. If the Beavers are able to win both games on Day 1, they’ll advance to the state title game, needing to lose twice in order to lose the title. If they split on Day 1 their journey becomes significantly tougher as they’ll need to win three games on Day 2. That matters because softball pitchers are allowed to throw a maximum of 14 innings per day.
It’s something Hall’s already taken into consideration.
“That’s one of the things we sit down as coaches and look at,” Hall said. “We worked through all those scenarios and it depends on what happens. Our biggest deal right now is get Game 1. We want Game 1 you because if we win Game 1, it guarantees you’re going into Thursday in some capacity. So our goal is right off the bat is to do our best to win Game 1.”
The other change will be the playing surface.
The fields at Little Creek Park in South Charleston are turfed which plays differently than natural fields. In an effort to acclimate to that change the Beavers spent time practicing at Mitchell Stadium which eventually led to one question that’s become a rallying cry.
“We practiced on our field on last Thursday, and then we went over to Mitchell stadium to practice on the turf on Friday,” Hall said. “One of the things that came up in that conversation was, ‘Why not? Why not us?'”
