‘Finally coming together.’ Young Henry Clay softball team off to best start in years.
Starting a lineup of mostly sophomores, freshmen and middle-schoolers, Henry Clay softball has gotten off to its best start in years.
The Blue Devils (17-7) haven’t had a winning season since 2016, but appear a lock for that with 11 regular season games to go.
“It feels really nice,” said freshman pitcher Ella Smith (17-7), who has been in the circle for all but one inning this season and helped the Blue Devils seal a 12-5 victory over Tates Creek on Monday. “I feel like all the work that we put in over the past couple years is finally coming together.”
Henry Clay Coach Timothy McCoy took over the program in 2017, the year before redistricting and the creation of Frederick Douglass High School split the school’s athletic talent pool. Two years later, Douglass went 22-14 and finished 42nd District runner-up while Henry Clay suffered through a 3-33 campaign that included more mercy-rule blowouts than would be appropriate to count. Then COVID-19 canceled the 2020 season.
In 2021, Smith became the cornerstone of Henry Clay’s rebuild.
“We threw Ella to the wolves as a seventh-grader. And she did well, but she had 130 walks,” McCoy said. “Then last year as an eighth-grader, she had 30 walks.”
In Smith’s first season in 2021, Henry Clay went 11-24 and she had an earned run average of 5.24. Last year, Henry Clay finished 14-20 with a Smith ERA of 3.97. As a freshman this season, Smith has a 1.96 ERA with 143 strikeouts and 25 walks.
While Smith gets the ball every pitch for now, McCoy notes he has some middle-schoolers developing into what he hopes eventually will be a reliable stable of aces.
“Our pitching has gotten better,” McCoy said.
And so has everything else.
“It’s great because when I’m gone, they are going to be fine,” said third baseman Anna Webb, one of the team’s two seniors. “Somebody’s going to fill my position, and I feel like they have a lot of potential. They are going to do great things.”
Webb hit an RBI triple deep to right field Monday against Tates Creek that turned a 3-2 deficit into a 4-3 lead when she came home too after an error on the play in the third inning. She later had the first RBI in a seven-run fifth inning that put the game away.
Henry Clay scored the other six runs in the fifth with two outs on consecutive hits by freshman Ja’Onna Yates, sophomores Kyndal Brewster and Armani Happy, freshman Smith, seventh-grader Elise Pearson (a two-run double) and eighth-grader Emma Dunn.
And we haven’t even mentioned eighth-grader Haley McGuire, who leads the team in runs (31) and home runs (five). McGuire went 2-for-4 with a run scored and an RBI against Tates Creek.
Henry Clay swept both games against Creek this season, ending a 10-game losing streak to the Commodores that dated to 2016. Its 3-2 win over Woodford County on April 12 snapped an 11-game losing streak to the Yellow Jackets that dated to 2012. The Blue Devils’ 11-game win streak earlier this season is the longest Henry Clay has recorded over the 23 years of state records on the Kentucky High School Athletic Association’s website.
Next, Henry Clay turns its attention to 42nd District rival Bryan Station on Thursday. The Blue Devils lost 9-6 to the Defenders on April 11 in a game in which Henry Clay committed five errors and squandered its rally to tie the game 6-6 in the top of the sixth inning by giving up three runs in the bottom half.
“The big thing, being young, we have to make the routine plays,” McCoy said. “Most times we make those routine plays, but then sometimes our youth shows up and we don’t make those routine plays.”
Mistakes happen. Henry Clay’s players know that. But they don’t have to decide the outcome.
“I think it’s all around us trusting each other and just being an actual team this year,” Smith said of their improvement. “We just need to stay positive and cheer each other on.”
This story was originally published April 25, 2023 at 8:10 AM.
