Young Lady Wildcats Prep for New Season
BALD EAGLE TOWNSHIP – The 2020 season is gone, never played, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. In March of 2020 the Central Mountain Lady Wildcats were trying to figure out a way to replace eight seniors lost to graduation for the program’s District 6/9 championship the previous season.
But it was just about one year ago that all Pennsylvania scholastic sports got scratched because of the pandemic. So head coach Fred Caldwell’s team has reassembled for this new season and working hard in preparation for the season opener at home with State College on Monday, March 29 ast 4:30 p.m. A game at Mifflin County on Friday of this week was postponed.
Coach Caldwell has a couple weeks of preseason work in and said he is upbeat on what he has seen: “I’m always the optimist. I think the group that we have, both varsity and jv, are very talented and have the potential to be a very good team. We have 27 girls on the Varsity/JV rosters and going through the possible roster combinations was extremely difficult this year. Overall, this is one of the more talented group that I’ve had. It’s also one of the youngest.”
The coach offered these responses to questions from The Record:
How did last year’s season cancellation affect the program? Were kids returning this year able to get any play in through travel ball, etc? Like every other team, we were very disappointed when the 2020 season was cancelled. Not only did the seniors lose their senior season but every other player in the program lost a year of experience. We were optimistic about our prospects going into the season and thought that we would be in the running for back-to-back District titles. The vast majority of players continued to work with their travel teams and over the summer they continued to work and improve individually.
How does it look so far this season? How many kids are you working with? At this time, we have 13 on the varsity roster and 14 on the JV roster. Since I haven’t seen many of these players on the field since the 2019 season, I will continue to evaluate them and make adjustments to the rosters as needed. My goal is to find the best team to put on the field at play-off time.
Veterans/letter-winners back? There are currently only three players on the 2021 varsity roster from the 2019 varsity roster. There will be times this year when we could have as many as four freshmen on the field for varsity. We will be very young.
The hopes for the year? It is my hope that the upper classmen will give us the leadership that we will need with such a young team and that we will learn and get better as we go through the regular season. Again, we will be young, and we have to have a short learning curve to be competitive.
Who should be good in the Heartland Conference? It’s really difficult to predict this year. First, the conference was re-aligned from three divisions to two so we will be playing more conference games, including games against opponents that I have never seen. Due to the cancelation of the 2020 season, everyone’s roster will be dramatically different this year. All of the girls who were seniors and juniors on the 2019 rosters are gone. The seniors on the field this year were in 10th grade the last time they played school ball and there will be many many new faces on every team.
Where do the Lady ‘Cats fit in the mix? Where we end up this year will depend on how quickly we learn and come together as a team. The learning curve must be short, and the players must support and help each other every day. They have the potential to be a very good team, but I often tell players that “potential” means you haven’t done it yet. It will take lots of focus and teamwork to reach their potential as a group, but I think that they are up to the challenge and I’m looking forward to a great year back on the field.
