Thomas Heyward softball building for strong future
By David Shelton
Senior Writer
Ridgeland – Get your licks in now because beating up on the Thomas Heyward Academy softball team will get increasingly harder over the next few seasons.
Coach Jeb Fay has a very young, but talented, team on the rise. Playing a tougher varsity schedule this season may limit the number of wins but Fay feels the building blocks are coming together.
The Thomas Heyward program has a strong history, competing for state championships during a good run more than a decade ago. Interest faltered in recent years and the school dropped the program.
Fay, a longtime successful travel ball coach, took on restarting the program last season. With a group of very young players, the Rebels played a mixed schedule of varsity and junior varsity teams and had some success. This spring, the team is playing a full varsity schedule and the early showing in terms of success has been limited.
“We’re taking some lumps right now,” Fay said. “We are still fairly young overall and playing a tougher schedule has been tough. We have a group of competitive players but we also have a group that’s new to the game. That happens at a small school. We’re just focused on trying to learn and improve every day. The potential to be competitive is there for sure.”
Fay says a handful of players are active year-round with travel ball but even those players are young and developing. Of the 11 girls on the roster, there are two juniors. The rest are jayvee aged players.
The two juniors on the team are Olivia Meador and Abigail Hansen. Meador sees time as a pitcher and plays shortstop while Hansen is an outfielder.
Meador shares the pitching load with sophomore Caleigh Sottile. Behind the plate is eighth-grader Kayley Fay, one of the veteran summer ball players.
Freshman Sophia Arzillo is playing first base, joined on the right side of the diamond by freshman Ella Hampton. Hampton has been injured early on so freshman Lilly Gantt, normally an outfielder, is filling in at second.
Freshman EK Brown is the starter at third base. Other outfielders include Ruthie Garces, Destiny White and Audrey Eastman.
Fay says the team scored a lot of runs last season but the offense has struggled early on against tougher pitching.
“I feel like we can hit in some spots but we just need experience,” the coach said. “We have work to do defensively. We have a few in the outfield who struggle with fly balls and that’s not good. But we continue to work on it.”
Thomas Heyward also started a middle school program with another crop of solid players moving up in the future.
