Photo by Kyle Parmley.
John Carroll’s Abigayle Parker (18) pitches during a game against Mountain Brook on March 11 at Spartan Softball Field in Mountain Brook.
Just when it looked like the John Carroll Catholic High School softball team was about to hit its stride, everything stopped.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Cavaliers’ 2020 season was cut short in mid-March. John Carroll was prone to inconsistency over the season’s first few weeks, but head coach Jeri Beck felt like the team was prepared to begin building toward a strong stretch of play.
The Cavs’ last few games were in the Buccaneer Round Robin at Hoover the weekend of March 13-14. The three games they played over the two-day event encapsulated the season up to that point. John Carroll blew a big lead and tied with Hale County, lost to Benjamin Russell, then knocked off Hoover.
“We had some great moments in that tournament, we had some bad moments, and we ended on such a high note, beating Hoover,” Beck said.
With first baseman Kayla Coley-Drayton returning from injury during the last week of play, John Carroll finally had its roster at full strength for the first time all season. In the 5-3 win over Hoover, Macey Ogle hit a home run and pitched all five innings in the circle.
“That was our first weekend playing games with that lineup, and we were getting some chemistry,” Beck said.
The history books will show an 8-6-1 record for John Carroll’s season, but Beck believed her team to be capable of more than the mark showed. Coming off a surprise run to third place in the Class 5A state tournament in 2019, the Cavs returned most of the pieces that contributed in a big way to that team.
“I was hoping this team would be capable to some level of repeating what we did last year,” Beck said. “We were just starting to get some team chemistry.”
Heading into what turned out to be the season’s final tournament, uncertainty prevailed amongst players and coaches across the board as to the future of school and sports for the remainder of the spring.
After the games that weekend at Hoover, John Carroll’s team dispersed as normal. But in-person school never resumed, and the team was unable to meet again physically.
“We never really got to have the team conversations,” Beck said of the season being ended prematurely. “We’ve done a couple Google Meet [video calls] with the girls just to check in on them. I watch their grades to make sure they’re still doing their work.”
With the season now over, the John Carroll careers of Emma Bauer, Abigayle Parker, Claire Boone and Tannslee Duck have ended earlier than they had planned. Beck made a video to honor the four seniors and posted it on social media. Bauer is the only one planning to play in college, as she will be a student-athlete at Huntingdon College.
Beck has certainly remained busy during the final few months of school. As the director of technology at John Carroll, she has been available to assist students and fellow teachers with the transition to virtual learning. But she still hears from her players.
“The girls are working hard on their own,” Beck said. “They send me videos every once in a while.”
Unfortunately for the Cavs, they will never know what could have been. Macey Ogle led the team with four homers and had five wins in the circle. Boone finished with three homers and Charlotte Phillips hit two. Mallory Ogle led the team with a .543 batting average.
“It’s going to be the season with an asterisk,” Beck said. “How far could we have gone?”
