Speaking to head coach Ashley Coles after her team became the runner up in region 2-AAAAAA, she was confident her team could advance to the second round. Those expectations, although they were not met were very realistic. The Lady Rams came into the first round with an 13-15 record and Tift came into the matchup with an 11-17 record. After Tift’s sweep against Newton the two teams finished with identical records. Coles recaps her first year as head coach and speaks on the future of the program in this Q&A.
The Covington News: You guys made it to the playoffs in your first season as head coach. What grade would you give the team?
Ashley Coles: Overall I’d give us a B-minus.
CN: Tell me what you thought about how your team played throughout the season. You were region runner-ups, you didn’t get the results you wanted, but you played a good game. Tell me a little bit about that.
Coles: I feel like we played a good game, especially defensively. I’m not sure, I should check the books but I would say we held them to little or no errors at all. Our defense played flawlessly. I was proud of our pitching they only gave up a few really big hits in both games. Basically our girls played well on defense, which is something we struggled with at the beginning of the year. So I was very proud of how much we improved from the first game to our last game of the season.
CN: Tell me a little bit about the seniors you have leaving and how that’s gonna affect you.
Coles: We have Cheyenne Walsingham and Merlexia Maddox and both of those girls are great girls. On and off the field they do the right things. We’re gonna miss their good attitudes. Cheyenne playing third and right field for us, we’ll miss that a lot, because when (Madison Cronic) Madi’s hurt or pitching we have that third base spot filled and she did a great job stepping in. Merlexia did a great job on the base paths for us and in right field. I saw a lot of potential from both of them and I think they’ll go far in the future, even off the field.
CN: On the flip side of that, talk to me about the players you have returning. Now they’ve been with you for a year. They’re use to how you coach and you get a full year to prepare now.
Coles: I’m really excited and I have high hopes for the team that’s coming back. We only lost two so everyone else is coming back. I think we’re gonna gain one or two pretty good athletes from eighth grade. You never know we might have a transfer or two. I’m really excited about that. We have Ciara and Ashton our middle infielders are gonna be back, which they’ve worked really well together. They’ve been playing together for a long time. Madi Cronic and Brittany Ellis pitching will both be back and we should have a freshman pitcher coming in, which would be awesome. Our outfield is pretty set. We’re pretty set at every position. Of course we’ll have to fill a couple holes that the seniors will leave, but I think that we’ll do a great job of that. I’m really excited about next season.
CN: Where do you want the team to get better?
Coles: I definitely think that we should do a lot more of fundamentals with hitting. I think that our defense was so rough to begin with, and we had so many people playing out of their regular positions that we worked hard on that in the beginning of the year. I think now I’m gonna focus a little more on the offensive side. (At the sports academy) down the road, we can go there and hit anytime we want in the cages for free. I think that part of our game needs to step up if we’re gonna compete at a high level.
CN: Now that you have an off-season to prepare. How does that change for you from this first year? Do you see some things you might do differently or add to your practice regime or anything like that?
Coles: I do. I think we’re gonna do a lot more conditioning this year. Over the summer we had some girls that couldn’t make it because of travel ball purposes and things like that, which I understand. But, I’ve heard that we can actually tryout in spring this year. We can try out in the spring this year so I think having our team set through the summer and making workouts a little more mandatory, doing more at our conditioning will help us go further in the playoffs and in the season because we’ll be able to extend all the games that comes with it. Also, I wanna make it mandatory that the girls hit – not with me – but throughout the year that they go and get some type of lessons, find some team to play on this year at least pick-up ball. My thing is, we’ve seen such a huge improvement. I don’t want us to go from October to May and some of the girls not to touch a softball or a bat. That’s not gonna be beneficial to our program, so I’m really gonna be more involved with them throughout the whole entire school year more so than just our season this time.
