Fountain Central softball has had quite a run the last two seasons led by some really talented players. This past Monday, the Mustangs opened up the Class A Sectional 54 tournament at Riverton Parke against bitter rival Covington. Coming into the post-season FC had hopes of playing for a sectional title but those hopes were quickly dashed and the rival Trojans were able to dispatch FC 15-9 on Monday and end the Mustangs season.
A big reason for the season-ending loss was the Mustang defense committed seven errors behind starting pitcher Lilly Bennett who had taken over the No. 1 role from senior Kacey Kirkpatrick who broke her foot earlier this season. The Mustang offense did collected eight hits but too often stranded the bases loaded with chances of a big inning looming.
“We had opportunities left and right but just couldn’t get a clutch hit,” Mustang coach Ric Walke said of the loss. “We didn’t have a great game defensively either and when you couple those two things together, that’s not a recipe for success. It was a rare thing to see our offense struggle like that because we have been so good all season long. When you don’t take advantage of having the bases loaded multiple times in a game, it’s going to comeback and bite you.”
Fountain Central ends its 2024 season with a 12-13 record which is one more than they had a year ago. This season could be described as a ‘what if’ and of course that would be noting that back on April 18, Kirkpatrick, who was having a season for the ages, went down for the rest of the year. Despite not having one of their senior leaders, FC still rallied together and made the most out of every game.
“We really didn’t talk about not having Kacey until about a week after it happened,” Walke said. “When we did talk about it was a real heart to heart talk where we had to tell our girls that other people had to step up because unfortunately Kacey wasn’t coming back. We still accomplished so much this season that our girls should be proud of. We raised our team batting average by about 30%, we hit more home runs than last year, cut our errors down by over one per game. That was one of our big goals was to get better defensively and over the course of an entire season we did that. You throw those things in with freshman and sophomores stepping up to new roles. Then you add Zoe having an even better senior season than last year and there’s a lot of things that these girls can look back on and hold their heads high.”
The worst part of every season ending is saying goodbye to the seniors. In particular these four senior for FC in Zoe Foxworthy-Dejournett, Katie Brown, Sami Krout, and Kirkpatrick have brought life back into a Mustang program that was struggling for sometime. It’s a group that will have Kirkpatrick, Foxworthy-Dejournett, and Brown all go play at the next level. Walke took some time to reflect on a special group of players.
“They’ve all contributed in so many different ways for us,” Walke said of his senior class. “Of course three of them are going on to play college ball which is special. We know that Sami is going to go do big things too and as a program we’re looking forward to what all of them are going to do past high school. They were great leaders and role models for our younger players. We can only be thankful for what they gave us during their four years here at Fountain Central.”
