The Bulldogs Baseball and Softball squads are both off to scorching starts. They’re doing it very different ways though. While Coach Justin Simmons has 23 kids out for his 8-0 baseball team, softball coach Kaylea Stubblefield’s team has cobbled together a strong 7-2 start to the season despite only having 12 total players. Both were in attendance to talk about their teams at Thursday’s Kiwanis meeting.
Assisted by Travis Black and Craig Winter, Simmons’ baseball team is made up of 5 freshman, 5 sophomores, 6 juniors, and 6 seniors.
Having a roster this large, while promising, also provides a challenge.
“With 23, we’ve set up a JV team, but it’s tough to find games. Most other teams on our schedule don’t have the numbers to be able to play same day JV/varsity games. So we’re 5 weeks in and haven’t even played a JV game. We’ve had one cancelled and we’ve added quite a few; we’re up to 10 games now. And that’s where the freshmen will get to play.”
The early success of the Bulldog has them on the state rankings radar.
“If you haven’t seen, and to me this doesn’t mean much but the kids think it’s pretty cool, on Maxpreps, we’re actually ranked #2 in 2A and #4 in the entire state.”
Kaylea (Chappelle) Stubblefield is entering her 4th year as a coach, 3rd as head coach of the Lady Bulldogs softball team. She says
while she doesn’t have the numbers, the ones she has are great kids. The softball team is made up of 3 freshmen, 4 sophomores, a solitary junior, and 4 seniors.
Since starting the season 2-2, the team has racked up 5 wins in a row including an impressive run at the Fairfield tournament.
“We’re on a 5 game win streak which included on Saturday, we went and won the Fairfield tournament and the girls outscored opponents 30 – 0.”
Lady Bulldogs softball is the two time reigning co-champs of the Black Diamond Conference and she thinks they have a great shot and continuing that streak. They’ll open conference play on Tuesday against Hamilton County, who ended the Bulldogs season last year. You can hear that game and other select baseball/softball broadcasts on 97.3 WRUL.
