Young Waukon softball team battles hard but falls short of the win column during abbreviated 2020 campaign

While the 2020 Iowa high school softball season was certainly unique in its abbreviated format due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 Waukon softball season was unique in its own right. With just one senior, two juniors and just four players returning from last season’s varsity roster at all, the Indian diamond dwellers fielded a team more than half of which was made up of first-time varsity participants and sometimes featuring as many as four eighth graders cutting their varsity softball teeth during this year’s 0-13 campaign.

With a team mostly made up of young players without any varsity or even high school softball experience, an abbreviated season of just over a month from first practice to postseason due to COVID-19 restrictions did not allow for much experience to be gained during this 2020 campaign. But the time that was spent on the field by this season’s Tribe members certainly proved to be a swift learning curve that began to pay dividends as the season played on.

“We had adapted to the COVID-19 restrictions fairly quickly,” second-year Waukon softball coach Melissa Ward said of her team’s 2020 efforts. “The only downside to this season was that it was so short and with being such a young team, we didn’t get as much varsity game experience as I would have liked. Our greatest accomplishment was playing our best softball at the end of the season. The girls were starting to react on instinct and playing with their heart. We improved and grew so much in this shortened season. I’m looking to use our experience gained this season to make us even better next year and keep building for future years.”

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