Shorewood’s softball season started on March 16, the team is feeling strong as they are set to enter regionals. Shorewood is co-oped with USM and Brown Deer for a total of 15 players in the softball program. The team is mixed, consisting of both younger, less experienced players, and older, more practiced members.
“We’re up and down, [but] we’re very young,” said Head Coach Chris Miller. “We have seven kids who’ve never played softball before, so they’ve come in no ball, no bat, no glove ever in their life, and they’re playing varsity softball.”
Miller has been the coach of the co-op for 6 years now and he sets goals for the team’s performance and games. One of their goals is to improve on their performance last season, and build up current players into stronger members of the team.
“[One goal was to] win more than we did last year, so that’s checked off, we won five last year, we’ve won seven so far,” Miller said. “Our goal is to get one percent better every day, so we don’t need the kids who haven’t played before to have meteoric improvement, just slow and steady.”
Chemistry is also a factor in the team’s performance. Miller states that chemistry is one of the most important parts of how a team functions.
“We have three schools that make up our team, so obviously team chemistry is always a goal,” Miller said. “Try to get kids to get along with each other. I think the ultimate goal, even beyond winning, is to learn the game of softball, and have fun while you’re doing it.”
Miller says that the fact that the team is based in a co-op, changes how the chemistry works. However, they still function together as a unit.
“It’s interesting to have some cliques within the group, so we’ll have Brown Deer kids hang with the Brown Deer kids, and the Shorewood kids hang with the Shorewood kids, but our captains are captains for a reason,” Miller said. “They try to make sure that everybody gets along and has a good time, and [that they] aren’t always staying in their known box. It’s more dynamic in practice than it is in games. In games, we have the goal of playing softball, trying to win the game.”
Nora Cothroll is a sophomore on the team and has been playing softball for five years now. For Cothroll, the season is shaping up to be more solid than last year.
“It’s been decent, we don’t have too many games left,” Cothroll said. “I’m hopeful our regional game should be somewhat winnable, better than last year, we’ll see how it goes.”
Baseball
The baseball season began on March 23, and the team is feeling confident. The program has undergone some changes since last year, most notably, they have ended the co-op with Brown Deer.
“The team this year is gritty,” said Josh Patte, a senior and captain of the baseball team. “I like our squad this year. We’ve been through a lot more adversity. We also kind of have a bit of a chip on our shoulder. We received a lot of funding from the Men’s Club, and from kind parents that donated to our program, so we’re trying to kind of change the narrative. Shorewood baseball has never been good. We don’t even have a banner in the arena … because we have not won conference or state, but that should change soon.”
Patte values the team’s work over his own. As captain, he tries to push the team up as a whole, and cares more about team wins over his own quality of play.
“Honestly, since it’s my senior year, I care more about how the team does than I do personally,” Patte said. “I consider it a success if the team wins, but I have a bad game, so yeah, I’m more focused on how well the team does compared to my individual success.”
Patte adds that another big part of the team is the community that they build. He says that they function as a great group of guys, all working together and having fun.
“We’re a fun squad,” Patte said. “I enjoy coming to practice every day. There’s always something new. We just made our varsity and JV hacky sack squads, so those will be released today. We’ll see what the teams are. I enjoy being around my teammates. Pasta dinners are fun, I hosted one of the pasta dinners. We do fun stuff together. I love being a part of the squad.”
The loss of the co-op has created some unique issues for the team.
“This season, in particular, I would say that a couple of the biggest challenges are practices,” Patte said. “We don’t have a home field, like we play at Henry Aaron, which is where UW Milwaukee used to play, but it’s never a guarantee that we’re gonna be able to practice there, because I believe I remember asking Coach Otero, our head coach, [he said it was] 400 dollars every time we use that field, so we either will be at that field or we’ll be at Shorewood in the North Gym, but we never know.”
Patte also adds that their schedule is more difficult this year, consisting of higher ranked teams.
“I would also say a bit of a challenge is the strength of schedule for this season compared to last year’s,” Patte said. “I think it plays in our favor, but last year we had a lot more games that we blew teams out, and it was more of a cake walk compared to this year. [This year] we’ve played a lot of ranked teams, we beat Muskego, they’re ranked in the top ten. We play Germantown Saturday. They’re undefeated, they’re like the fourth best team in the state, so it’s a rigorous schedule, plus we’ve also moved down to D2 instead of D1, so we can hopefully make a longer run into playoffs and into Appleton.”