Softball thrives under second-year co-op

Nora McKoy, Staff Writer|April 29, 2023

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Nora McKoy
SLIDING TO VICTORY 8th grader Tamari Christopher skids to home plate earning the Spartans Softball team a point. The final score of the game was 7-0 against Breck on Apr. 14. “I'm gonna come into every game really confident that we're gonna win. Christopher said.

New team, same dream, says the Spartan Softball team. Captain Greta Magnuson feels hopeful for the season ahead as Spartans Softball begins its second year as a co-op with Great River and Twin Cities Academy. “It’s definitely been going a lot smoother this year because everyone knows each other,” said Magnuson.

Magnuson plays catcher and this is her second season as captain. She has been playing softball since she was three years old. She acknowledges the difficulties and benefits of co-op teams: “Last year it was hard being a captain with captains that we didn’t really know,” she said, “but the really nice thing is that these are your built in friends.” There are 23 players on the team: 16 from SPA, six from TCA, one from Great River.

Junior Poppy Ploen expresses similar feelings. “I feel like it took a second for us to warm up to each other because we’d all been playing on teams separately,” Ploen said about last year’s season. But she too believes that this season will be better. “I’m really looking forward to seeing how our team performs, just because we are significantly stronger than we have been in some of our past years.”
She said.

Another player who is feeling enthusiastic is an eighth-grader pitcher who has only been on the team for two years. Tamari Christopher says she’s looking forward to “learning new things and meeting a bunch of people”

The season is already off to a great start. Despite the issues with the weather the softball team has gotten solid practice time and has won their games on Apr. 10, 14, and 22 against Humboldt, Breck, and Highland Park. They lost to Minnehaha and Breck on Apr. 18 and 24 putting their record at 3-3. In 2021, their record was 0-11.

Spartan Softball team plays at Blake this Saturday at 10 a.m.