On May 15, Sentinels girls varsity softball team played and won their last home game of the year against Butte. The game itself was not only important because it was the seniors’ last home game, but also because it was a playoff game for getting into state.
The playoff game is a best out of three series, and Sentinel won the first two games, the first with a score of 3-2 and the other game with a score of 9-5.
The Season
The softball season started on March 10th which was the first day of practice. The first game for JV was on March 20th against Stevensvill. Varsity’s first game was on March 21st against Billings Skyview and it was a home game.
The team started the season off strong by beating Skyview 17-6. Sentinel has a team had a batting average of 0.486 and had three players each get three runs: #19 senior Haley Sellers, #22 senior Kai Gillis, and #8 Alyssa Hanninen.
Sentinel lost their next two games against Billings West with a score of 13-0 and Billings Senior with a score of 9-3. During the game against Senior, Stellers had two runs and Freshman Makenna Starb had one.
The team’s best game was their fourth game of the season against Helena Capital who were last year’s state champions. Sentinel shut Helena out with a score of 15-0. The batting average for the team was .545 and #25, senior Sydney Goldbar, had the only home run of the game. Other then Goldbar, six out of the eight seniors on the team scored at least one run in the game, and #0, senior Brooklyn Wright, had the most runs of the game with three.
They won against Hellgate with a score of 11-1 and a batting average of .381. The team did lose to other cross town rivals Big Sky in a tight game where Big Sky got the final run in the 6th inning to end the game with a score of 4-3.
Sentinel has eight seniors on the team which is a substantial amount considering the team is made up of only (however many) girls.. Head coach Wade Sellers gave an interview about how the seniors have grown over the last four years he has been head coach for the team. “It’s really mentally and their knowledge of the game has grown more the physical aspect.”
He also talked about how he felt about the season saying that, “we have had our ups and downs, but that is how it goes every day. As long as you get better, you can take the downs and learn from them”.
The team has been consistently showing up to win each game with only losing a few here and there. Their home record is 8-5, away record is 4-4, and their overall is 12-10 with them being 4th in the AA western division. The majority of their games have also been high scoring with only four games being under five runs for the team.
State predictions
There are eight teams in the class AA state softball tournament which lasts three days from Thursday, May 22, to Saturday, May 24. Sentinel will face off against Belgrade Thursday May 22 in the afternoon at 2pm. If they win the game, they will play the winner of the Kalispell Glacier and Billings West game on Friday morning at 10am. If they lose, they will play the loser of that game on Friday at 12pm
By going off of statistics, it seems that Belgrade will be a hard team to beat as they rank eighth in the state and have an overall season record of 10-2. Sentinel ranks 21st in the state, but if they can beat Belgrade they could get to the semi-finals with a .333 batting average as a team.
Coach Sellers was also asked about how he felt about going into state “really confident, I think the girls are in a really good place”.
Rebuilding
After this season, the Softball team is going to go through a significant rebuilding process as they are losing eight players in which three of those are some of their top performers.
Wright had 28 runs this season making her the top player to score for the team. The next player to take over her position as top scorer is Junior Alyssa Hanninen has scored 20 runs this season.
Nina Samoury is the team’s number one catcher with a fielding average of .982. The player that will most likely take her place is Junior Hailey Papp who has a fielding average of .956.
The top hitter on the team is Goldbar who has had 29 hits this season. Hanninen could potentially be next season’s top hitter with her hit total being 27 right now.
Overall, Sentinels softball team has already had a successful year by making it into the state tournament. Their stack of seniors helped shape the team’s powerful dynamic but they also have young players like Makenna Strab and Sophomore Payton Taylor who could lead the team to a very bright future.
