Wolverine History: Softball Rocks, from a Rock-Filled Kickball Field to Upper-State Finals
Part 9 of the Woodruff Times history series traces Woodruff High softball from a winless start in 1996 to district titles and an upper-state championship series in 2017.
Part nine of The Woodruff Times series "Moments That Changed Wolverine History," published April 26, 2021, tells how Woodruff High softball grew from nothing. Here is our summary.
The program started in 1996, among the last teams the school added. The first Lady Wolverines played on a repurposed intramural kickball field behind Woodruff Elementary, and before practice they had to clear rocks from it. Athletic director Willie Varner, whose granddaughter Jessica Burnette played second base, was in charge of getting the program going. The team went winless in 1996 and 1997 under its first two coaches, Ted Thern and Fran Thomas.
Things turned in 1998 when Lea Ann Skinner, a former college catcher, took over. Woodruff won its first game that year, a 10-run mercy-rule win over Carolina High, and in 1999 it beat longtime power Chapman. The paper credits early players including Staci Henry, Emily Montjoy (Babb) and pitcher Elizabeth Lindman (Hawes) as part of that foundation.
In the mid-2000s Jennifer Jones, Dena Messer and Brandi Mullins led the program to its first playoff trips. Mullins threw the school's first no-hitter in 2006, against Clinton, and Jones, an all-state catcher, holds school hitting records. A new field with dugouts, a regulation fence and a digital scoreboard opened in 2008. Carly Frady led the team to its first district championship in 2012, and Woodruff won another in 2017.
In 2017 the team reached the upper-state championship series for the first time. It lost game one to Crescent 9-8 in extra innings and was shut out in game two, one win short of the state final. The next year, in the district round, Woodruff beat Crescent after a late three-run home run by Olivia Patton and a walk-off single in the seventh. The article closes with Burnette saying the early players are part of each other's history. The paper names Will Lanford as the current head coach.
Read the full article at The Woodruff Times (link below).