After picking up valuable experience for a youth-laden teamayearago,theKingston Lady Redskins embark on the 2024 fast pitch season with visions of challenging powerhouse Lone Grove in the district race.
Coach Aaron Minor’s club welcomes back six full-time starters along with a parttime starter and will look to that cast along with an extremely talented group of freshmen to improve on last year’s 14-17 record.
The Lady Redskins will remainextremelyyoungwith six or seven expected starters being either freshmen or sophomores.
“What we return from last year has definitely been bolstered by the incoming group of freshmen,” Minor said. “That crew has some really good players that will help us.
“I really think we’ll have a lot more speed this year. We don’t have any big boppers that are going to hit the ball out of the park on a regular basis. We are going to need to rely on small ball a little more and put pressure on people on the bases. We have to string some hits together and manufacture runs when we can with our bunting and stolen bases.”
Senior Kenadea Elkins will be one of the keys to the returning nucleus for Kingston, both defensively at her catcher position as well as at the plate. She’ll be joined by senior outfielder Ayli Minor and junior Amberly Hallum as key veteran cogs in the lineup.
Destry Davis, Ava Bain, Alyssa Langford and Khloe Hall should all be even better this year as sophomores after making solid debuts in their first high school campaigns.
In the pitching circle, the duo of Hall and Hallum is once again expected to be the catalysts of the Lady Redskin staff and notch most of the innings as the season goes along.
Minor pointed to a more difficult schedule this season for the Kingston squad as a key factor to have them well prepared come playoff time, even though they might take some lumps early on.
They were slated for a busy opening schedule this week that included the Calera Tournament before a key district battle with perennial powerLoneGroveontheroad Tuesday following a home game with Davis to start the week. They will also travel out of state to a tournament in Colorado next week with other tournaments set at Plainview, McLoud and Durant.
“Our schedule is a lot tougher this year,” Minor stated. “It may take a bit for our young ones to get going. We will have six or seven starters that are going to be freshmen or sophomores so getting them accustomed early will be key. A handful of those sophomores started last year so they will have that experience to feed off.
“The district games will obviously be the most important. We feel good about where we stack up in the district and challenge Lone Grove for the district title.”