Perennial powerhouse Yelm going beyond the numbers to enjoy successful start to shortened softball season
From the fan’s eye view, sports often are reduced to numbers.
Yelm High School’s softball team was 5-0 entering Tuesday. The Tornados had outscored opponents, 64-10. They were hitting .392 as a team, with six players batting over .400. Both of their pitchers had earned run averages below 1.00.
It’s business as usual on the prairie, right?
The team that has reached the state Class 3A state playoffs each of the past five seasons, and played in the championship game twice, is doing its usual thing.
Maybe.
But with a two-year gap since high school softball was last played in Washington and what will likely be a three-year gap in the playing of state championship events, Yelm’s coaches and players have a new appreciation for the process of creating those blowout wins and impressive statistics.
“We want to take advantage of any playing time we do get, because you never know when it could be your last game,” said senior catcher Audrey Missildine, who was a junior varsity player called up for the postseason in 2018 and 2019.
She’d hoped to use Yelm’s 10-4 loss to Garfield in the last state title game as a springboard to a championship as she moved into a starting role.
Instead, she knows she’ll never play in another high school postseason game.
“Our biggest goal now is to do our best, have fun and enjoy our last season,” she said.
Even coach Lindsay Walton, in her 16th year at the helm, has a new outlook.
“I definitely realize I still have a passion for coaching,” she said. “I didn’t realize how much I had missed it until we were out on the field for the first practice. The girls probably feel the same way. You don’t realize how much you miss something until it’s taken from you and you don’t know if you’re going to get it back.”
Yelm’s team — particularly a cohort of nine juniors — missed each other during a school year filled with online classes, that only recently began mixing in two days a week of live classes.
“We have a really special bond,” said junior lefthander Vivian Watts, who had a 0.97 ERA and 19 strikeouts in 21 innings heading into Tuesday’s game at River Ridge. “I’ve played with a lot of these girls since I was six on a U-8 team.”
But minus bumping into each other in the halls during the school day, the bond has been less intense.
“With online school, we haven’t been able to see each other much,” said Missildine, who had an .888 slugging percentage after the Tornados’ first five games. “Now that we are getting to see each other at practice, it’s made us that much more of a tighter group.”
Though club softball was played to varying amounts of games during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, Yelm’s players are spread among different elite teams, making individual and small group workouts key.
Third baseman Ashlyn Aven has a batting cage at home in Roy and also participates in wrestling and equestrian, keeping in shape through constant activity. Missildine has a patch of turf suitable for catching drills and helped her 7-year old sister Elana practice for her Lacey recreation league team. Watts’ sister Olivia is an outfielder and pitcher at Pierce College, and they worked out together.
A few times per week, a small group of Tornados, typically including Aven, who slashed at .562/.588/.937 through five games to establish herself as Yelm’s top hitter, Watts, Missildone, Kailei Thompson, Kendall Lawson and Elena Castanon would gather to conduct self-organized drills.
The results included consecutive 3A South Sound Conference routs of North Thurston, Capital, River Ridge and Timberline as well as an 11-7 come from behind win over typically strong Spanaway Lake.
“With three seniors and nine juniors, we’ve got a veteran team,” said Walton, who along with her sister and assistant coach, Cortney, coached the bulk of their players on a sixth grade club team five years ago.
“But we’re still kind of a young team since they didn’t get to play together last year. They have been around the program and it’s neat to see the progress they’ve made all the way from sixth grade.”
Aven leads Yelm with eight runs batted in, while fellow juniors Lawson and Molly Embrey have driven home six each. Katelyn Cederburg (.667), Aven, senior Darlene Keyes (.545), freshman Elissa Dewees (.500), Embrey (.462) and Castanon (.400) were all hitting over .400 prior to Tuesday’s game. In addition to Watts, freshman Madisyn Erickson had seen time in the circle, recording a 0.00 ERA and .121 opponent’s batting average in eight innings.
The Tornados have their eyes on the 3A SSC championship this season, but the junior class is also thinking ahead to hoped-for normalcy during the 2022 season, both in terms of championship goals and a bigger dose of the intangibles they play for.
“Our senior year is going to be about doing the things we can’t do now,” Aven said. “We can’t do the fun stuff, hanging out with the girls, the team bonding activities. It’s going to be our senior year and those are all my friends.
“It’s going to be awesome to get back to that.”
This story was originally published April 14, 2021 at 5:00 AM.