Young Lady Blues softball team looks to keep momentum going

• (ARCHIVE PHOTO | THE GRAHAM LEADER) Larissa Warren sprints around second base and heads for third for a triple she hit during one of Graham’s first summer league games in early June.
• (ARCHIVE PHOTO | THE GRAHAM LEADER) Kylie Pruitt follows through on her swing after making hard contact with the ball during one of Graham’s summer league games earlier this season.
• (ARCHIVE PHOTO | THE GRAHAM LEADER) The Lady Blues infield meets in the pitcher’s circle with their summer league coach for a meeting about strategy during a game earlier this summer.
• (ARCHIVE PHOTO | THE GRAHAM LEADER) Graham pitcher Tiffany Cotter starts her windup in the pitching circle before releasing a throw home during one of the team’s summer league games.

The first month of summer vacation has come and gone, and with it, most teams’ summer leagues have ended.

For the Graham Lady Blues softball team, the past month of weekly competitions provided an opportunity for a young team to come together as they work next season on replacing the talented individuals who graduated.

Graham’s summer roster featured six players who played on the varsity team this past year (with a couple returners missing out on the summer league) and six players who were either on junior varsity or are incoming freshmen. It’s a solid group of youth and veteran experience, but they face a tall task in the coming season.

To recap, the Lady Blues’ 2024 team finished the year with a 24-10 record overall, which included a 6-2 district record and regular season district championship. It was the second year in a row the Lady Blues claimed the district trophy and led them into the playoffs yet again.

In the first round of the playoffs, Graham dismantled Lubbock Estacado in two games, outscoring the Lady Matadors 31-7 in two games.

The Lady Blues then ran into an always tough opponent in the Burkburnett Lady Bulldogs, who ended Graham’s season in the area round of the postseason.

Following the conclusion of the season, Graham’s program lost a significant amount of production with the graduation of its seniors. The Lady Blues had seven players graduate, which was nearly half of the 2024 roster.

Taking a quick look at some of their collective stats, that group of seniors had 158 of the team’s 218 RBIs (72%), scored 179 out of 265 runs (68%) and had a mean batting average of .381.

On the pitching side, Reese Calhoun was the lone senior to see time in the circle for the team, but she pitched the bulk of Graham’s innings this year.

Calhoun threw 159 1/3 innings of the total 200 available and started 29 of the 32 games she pitched in.

Suffice to say, Graham’s team this past season was led in large part by its seniors, and the returning players mixed with the newcomers will have a tall task ahead of them in seeking a third consecutive district title.

But the summer Lady Blues have had a successful run overall while figuring things out in exhibition games. Graham finished the summer schedule with a 6-5 record as the team showed flashes of excellence while also giving a sense of what to work on leading up to the 2025 season.

Graham head coach Adam Arrington knows that replacing that contingent of seniors will be difficult, but he’s confident in his returning players and the incoming freshmen that they’ll be able to get the job done.

“It’s going to be big shoes to fill, but they’re going to get after it,” Arrington said following the area round loss in May. “We’ll just take a little bit of time off and get back to work.”

Summer leagues play with altered rules to ensure opportunities for players on both teams to get in sufficient work. One of the biggest rules was that once a team scored four runs in an inning, the inning ended.

Despite certain limitations, the Lady Blues had an overall strong offensive showing throughout the month. In 11 games, Graham scored 64 runs for an average of 5.8 runs per game.

Pitching and defense allowed 44 runs to create a positive run differential at +20. Throughout the course of a softball season, typically a net positive in runs scored will win games.

Graham’s best win arguably came in a 10-1 rout over Cisco. It was just the second time the Lady Blues broke double digits in these shortened games after a 12-5 win over Millsap on the first day of competition.

Against Cisco, the Lady Blues combined an impressive offense with a dominant pitching performance.

It won’t be easy to make up for the loss of such stark offensive and defensive numbers from the outgoing class of seniors.

Going for a three-peat of district titles won’t come without its challenges as the district competitors will play with a vengeance for the crown.

Graham’s Lady Blues look up to the challenge despite their youth, and players and fans will be in for a fun season come spring 2025.

• Sports