Low participation imperils softball season

Let's be clear: the Lady Wolves softball team showed up in force this year.

Unlike the high school baseball team, which didn't garner enough participants to field a full team (not enough relief pitching for a double-header has hamstrung the Wolves baseball team for this season), the softballers have 16 student athletes – almost enough players to stock two full teams without relief – raring to go. Unfortunately, they lack credible opposition, school activities officials have said.

Officials have tried in recent days to round up the usual suspects, to little avail. Craig, Klawock, Haines, and other Southeast towns haven't managed to put up a team. As recently as Monday, Petersburg High School failed to get enough participants for even a single team, forcing the last-minute cancellation of a planned cross-Narrows match, said head coach Kathleen Harding.

"They had six solid, and then I heard the girls scrounged up four more, and then I don't know what happened," she said.

The Lady Wolves were waiting Tuesday to see if a last-minute schedule change could pit them against Ketchikan this weekend, according to head coach Kathleen Harding.

"I should know today or tomorrow what we're gonna do," she said.

The Lady Wolves have been at the Volunteer Park for the last six weeks, shagging flies and (mostly) making throws to first, and the possibility of practice without a season was disheartening, though this isn't the first year personnel and desire have struggled to match up, Harding said.

"It's been a challenge," she said. "Usually it's me struggling to get a team. It's kind of gone back and forth."

One year she started out with 12 people, enough to field a full slow-pitch team, only to lose one player to grades. Another player quit, and then another player injured her wrist. A slow-pitch team requires ten people, so Harding decided to go with a fast-pitch team, requiring only nine players. Then another player dropped out because of a medical procedure, leaving eight players

"Of course she couldn't play, so then I was out," she said. "The last few years have been kind of rough."

Another year, she was particularly excited about a crop of five athletic freshman girls who seemed like a good match for the team.

"That was the first year I didn't have a team," she said.

Even if the Ketchikan away game was to materialize, Ketchikan is a IIIA school, and has a depth of talent that's hard to match, Harding said.

"I don't like to go to Ketchikan because they start so much earlier than we do here," she said. "They've got a huge program down there in Ketchikan."

Fast-pitching a softball requires a certain form. Ketchikan girls have more experience with that form because they start playing at a younger age, Harding said.

While the town little league program welcomes player of any gender, participation for female students typically starts to lag in the middle school grades, Harding said, in part because boys start to throw harder and faster at about that age.

"They start them off down there at eight or nine," she said. "Where I don't get them until they're freshmen here."

Even if the other Southeast teams don't materialize, Harding has a plan to schedule an unofficial exhibition season, so weeks of practice won't have been in vain.

"We're talking about at the very least grabbing a couple of the middle school – like eighth graders or something – and splitting half and play here," she said.