Young Softball Team Playing Well So Far

The 2011 softball season has certainly been different this year for and for first year head coach Dan Rattacasa.

Due to field construction, the Lady Cardinals spent their preseason in the gym, Washington Memorial Field and Berkeley Field, which will be their home field for the season.

“It is tough to say who will be the key players this season as each position is valuable in itself,” said Rattacasa. “We have a predominantly young team and each person is as valuable as the next.”

This is Rattacasa’s first year as head coach of the softball team but he has the goals and philosophy down.

“Softball has been extremely exciting because there are multiple facets of the game that always need to be practiced,” he said. “You can make things as simple or as complex as you want but we all know that the best teams do the little things right all of the time.”

The goals for this season are to qualify for the state and county tournaments, compete for a division title, have a team first mentality, think positively no matter the situation and to be better today than you were the day before.

Senior leadership from such players as Kaitlyn Mutchko, Gabrielle Galvan and Alyson Dritschel will also be essential to the team’s success.

Competing and working hard day in and day out will be important for a young team that has been on a variety of fields because the fields project at the high school.

“Our expectations are very high as you must set these standards in order to achieve successful results,” said Rattacasa. “We expect every player to compete during each and every pitch. We expect all members of the team to contribute to the growth and development of the program by practicing hard regardless of the situation. We expect to be extremely competitive within our division and we expect to make both the state and county tournaments.”

It should be a fun, challenging and interesting year for Westwood Softball at Berkeley Field and on the road.