West Greene trying to forget about past, focusing on three-peat
When people asked West Greene High School softball coach Bill Simms why he scheduled a game against Belle Vernon – which went on to win the WPIAL Class 4A championship – near the end of last year’s regular season, Simms had a pretty blunt answer.
“We aren’t afraid of a loss,” he responded. “That’s one thing in our philosophy that we have not changed.”
Losses haven’t come around too often for the Pioneers. The three-time defending WPIAL champions and winners of the last two Class A state titles have experienced only seven losses over the past three seasons.
If West Greene will want to make another deep postseason run, Simms knows the Pioneers will have to do one thing.
“Forget about it,” he said of past successes. “I just think we have to forget about what we’ve done. We have to find the identity of the 2019 team. We can’t worry about what the three teams before have done. I would like to guard against everyone’s idea that if we don’t make it back (to the state championship) that it’s an abortion of the season.”
The core group of players who have brought five gold medals back to Greene County – three in the WPIAL tournament and a pair of PIAA golds – remains almost intact.
West Greene returns four first-team all-state selections, McKenna and Madison Lampe, Kaitlyn Rizor and Jade Renner. Renner, the team’s primary pitcher, will move up in the batting order to third, a spot left vacant when her sister, Madison, graduated.
“She has done everything we’ve asked her to do,” Simms said of Renner, who hit .530 with 39 RBI last season.
In 176 plate appearances over her freshmen and sophomore seasons, Renner stuck out only three times.
“She has just always been a great hitter but under the radar with everybody else in the lineup,” Simms said. “We didn’t ask her to put the whole team on her back while she is pitching. She hasn’t been asked to strike out 17 a game. She pitches to contact. We feel comfortable putting her in that same role this year. We have another outstanding defense to play behind her. I think it makes her exponentially better. It has to make it easier. We have just an absolute lock solid defense.”
The four returning all-state players, who are projected to be the Pioneers’ leadoff through cleanup hitters, combined for 188 hits, 134 RBI, 35 doubles, 11 triples and 16 home runs last year.
The first option of replacing the elder Renner at shortstop is junior Brianna Amos. Sophomore Jersey Wise will take over in the outfield for Linzee Stover and Brianna Goodwin will play first base, a spot vacated by Lexie Mooney.
“We don’t have it 100 percent figured out,” Simms admitted. “We have multiple scenarios.”
Simms will get a first look at many of the scenarios when West Greene plays four consecutive days at the Ripken Experience in Myrtle Beach, S.C., starting Thursday. The Pioneers will play Edgewood and St. Joseph Academy from Ohio and a pair of schools from Kentucky, Campbellsville and Frederick Douglass.
The southern games could be the start of West Greene becoming only the second team in WPIAL history to win three consecutive state softball championships. Hempfield was the first to do it by winning its third straight title last season.
“If you can put us in the state finals, just get that worked out with the PIAA and we will be out there,” Simms joked. “It would mean the world to us to get back, but there is a lot of hard work and luck that goes into getting there.”