Shimek has come long way with Waynesburg softball
In 1993, Bill Clinton became president.
Barry Bonds made his San Francisco Giants debut.
The Academy Award-winning motion picture “Schindler’s List” hit the theatres, and Waynesburg College’s softball team won the Presidents’ Athletic Conference championship.
It took 29 years, five presidents and 586 Bonds home runs for Waynesburg to repeat as champions, but on Mother’s Day 2022, it happened.
With no seniors, only three juniors, a freshman pitcher who evolved into one of America’s best and a coach who turned the ship around in just three full seasons, the Waynesburg Yellow Jackets ended nearly three decades of famine.
Shimek’s mission
After the 2018 season – where Waynesburg went 12-20 for its sixth straight losing season – the program hired a new coach.
The University didn’t have to look far to find Brett Shimek. Shimek led the softball program at Waynesburg Central High School for four seasons.
Year 1 of the Shimek era didn’t go well. The Yellow Jackets went 8-26, and more important, Shimek lost his father, Stanley “Ron” Shimek, early in the season.
Year 2 amounted to seven games. Waynesburg’s season began in Myrtle Beach, S.C. and, because of COVID-19 shutting the world down, it ended in Myrtle Beach.
“It was a crazy, awkward time…,” Lauren Lober, a 2019 graduate of Chartiers-Houston High School and one of the three juniors, said. “But I knew we’d get back on the field one day.”
The Yellow Jackets got back on the field the following March and proceeded to go 12-24 overall and 3-15 in conference play.
Going into his third real season, Shimek’s overall record at Waynesburg was 21-56.
With eight straight losing seasons, people didn’t expect much from this group of Yellow Jackets, and Waynesburg was picked seventh in the PAC’s annual preseason poll.
Shimek was more optimistic than that.
“I knew we had a lot of talent,” Shimek said, “and it’s just a matter of putting it together and building that team culture.”
Myrtle Beach magic
In Shimek’s first three seasons at Waynesburg, the southern comfort of Myrtle Beach had been anything but comforting.
On the last day of the Myrtle Beach trip in 2019, Shimek found out he had lost his father.
It was in Myrtle Beach in 2020, where Waynesburg went 1-6 and abruptly lost its season days after returning to campus.
With no Myrtle Beach trip in 2021 due to COVID-19 restrictions, the Yellow Jackets returned to South Carolina in 2022.
This trip was different.
The Jackets went 6-3 and headed back to Waynesburg with a winning record.
“When we left Myrtle Beach,” Freshman and PAC Pitcher of the Year Sydney Wilson said, “I knew that this team was going to be special.”
The taste of winning made the Jackets want more.
“That made us work 10 times harder than we had worked,” Lober said. “Knowing that we could go far this season.”
Super Syd
Perhaps as much as anything else, the 2022 Myrtle Beach trip will be remembered as the time Waynesburg’s players found out just how good Sydney Wilson was.
Wilson, a Pentress, W.Va. (population: 156) native, had a decorated high school career at Clay-Battelle, where she helped her team to the state tournament as a sophomore.
When she got to Waynesburg, Wilson didn’t have the same confidence that her coach had in her.
“I was never one that would talk about my pitching,” Wilson said, “because I didn’t ever think that I was going to be good enough.”
She is good enough, and it didn’t take long for her to prove it.
In Myrtle Beach, Wilson pitched in five games, started three and didn’t give up an earned run over 26 innings.
It only got better from there.
Regular-season renaissance
Wilson didn’t allow any earned runs in Myrtle Beach, and, eventually, she’d give up some.
But not many.
Over 20 starts (all complete games), 26 appearances, and 146 innings, Wilson has allowed just 22 earned runs, good for a microscopic 1.06 ERA.
Having Wilson in the circle for more than half of Waynesburg’s games helped Waynesburg, and the team had quality talent all around the field.
Another Sydney, Sydney Senay, a graduate of Canon-McMillan, hit .375 and joined Wilson on the PAC’s first-team all-conference squad.
Ella Brookman, another Chartiers-Houston graduate, hit .416 and made second-team all-conference, joined by McGuffey’s Brin Hunter (who hit an even. 400) and Reghan Benschoter.
Three Yellow Jackets – Kiana Bagnell, Mackenzie Kearns and Kayla Gratton – made honorable mention all-conference.
Waynesburg finished 24-9, set a school record for wins and went 13-5 in the PAC to finish second.
Before the season, Shimek and the coaching staff set a goal to finish in the top three of the PAC. Mission accomplished. Next task: Winning the PAC tournament.
‘Just dance’
The only team that finished the regular season with a better conference record than Waynesburg was Westminster, who the Yellow Jackets beat 7-2 less than two weeks before the tournament started.
Sure, the Jackets felt some degree of pressure, what with being the No. 2 seed and championship glory just three wins away.
Mostly, however, Waynesburg was relaxed.
With the season already a success, the PAC tournament was a time to play hard but have some fun.
“Our mentality going in was ‘listen, we’re not supposed to be here, nobody thought we’d be here, we’ve had the most wins in school history,'” Shimek said. “We have no pressure.'”
“We had something to prove,” Brookman said, “but we were like, ‘we weren’t expected to win this tournament.’ We had nothing to lose.”
“I was just going out there and having the time of my life,” Wilson said.
“Our mentality,” Lober said, “was ‘just dance.'”
Dancing the night away
To start the tournament, the Yellow Jackets beat third-seeded Bethany, 3-2.
Up next, mighty Westminster.
The Titans were the favorites with a 16-2 conference record and six first-team all-conference selections.
But that didn’t matter to Waynesburg.
Between Thursday and Sunday – with two postponements pushing the championship round back two days – Waynesburg and Westminster played 14 innings of softball and never trailed for a second.
In the last inning of what ended up being the championship game – Westminster would have forced an “if-necessary” contest with a win – the Jackets led, 3-1, and Wilson was on the edge of glory.
She gave up a leadoff double but got the next two.
Then, a 5-3 put out – third baseman Sydney Senay to first baseman Emma Bliss – extinguished 29 years of anguish.
For Lober, it was a satisfying climax to a frustrating year marred by injury. For Shimek, it was a chance for “silent communication” with his late father, who he started thinking about before the last out.
For Wilson, the significance of the whole thing didn’t set in until the next morning.
“Honestly, it didn’t hit me that we had won,” Wilson said. “I knew everyone would come out to celebrate, and I was in the middle of the circle, but it hadn’t hit me quite yet.”
Now, it’s hit her.
The target
If Waynesburg was an afterthought before the 2022 season, it won’t be going into 2023.
No matter what happens the rest of this season – The Jackets play the third-ranked team in the country, Eastern Connecticut State, Friday at 4:30 in the NCAA regional round – Waynesburg will come into next season as defending PAC champs and graduating zero seniors.
The team will be on notice, and its players already know it.
“Oh yeah,” Brookman said. “There’s always pressure when you’re the champions.”
“There will be a giant target on our backs next season,” Wilson said. “But I think we’re up for the challenge.”
For Brookman, this championship is only the beginning.
“It was like all of our hard work had paid off,” she said, “and we’re not done yet, so look out for us.”