Starting
Over

Republic won 22 games last season and advanced to the Class 5 state quarterfinals. Since then, the Lady Tigers have lost their two primary pitchers, several of their top hitters, all three starting outfielders and head coach Lee Dishman, who retired.

But the Lady Tigers aren’t exactly starting from scratch. Denny McHenry takes over after spending last season as an assistant on Dishman’s staff, working with the outfielders. He coached softball and girls basketball at Logan-Rogersville for 14 years and coached boys basketball at Republic in the early 2000s, and he knows what the eight graduated seniors did for this program. Addie Brown hit .375 with five home runs and 33 runs batted in, Paige Elsenraat hit .357 and scored 33 runs, Piper Dishman hit .344 and went 11-2 in the circle, and Kara Goeke threw 112 innings and struck out 113.

“You just don’t replace the Addie Browns and Paige Elsenraats and Piper and Kara Goeke,” McHenry said. “You have to really work hard, and if you’re going to replace them, it’s probably going to be when you’re a senior. But we’re going to try to convince them they can do it.”

The summer was uneven with a revamped lineup, but McHenry said the team showed great improvement from the beginning to the end. Republic didn’t hit early, and McHenry pointed to a game against Neosho where the Lady Tigers were run-ruled without scoring. They beat that same Neosho pitcher 15-0 late in the summer league at Strafford.

The pitching has been steadier. Junior Kendra Goeke threw well all summer, and senior Jayma Pitchford will be in the circle, too, after logging a lot of innings for her travel team on top of the summer league. Sophomore Kennedy Smithson, a left-hander, is a new addition and likely to see time as a pitcher, as well.

“It’s really nice to have three pitchers on our roster that can throw the ball,” he said.

Senior Maddie Taylor has moved from first base to third, which McHenry called her natural position. She was an all-district pick a year ago and shows no signs of slowing.

“Maddie Taylor at third base has just been a stud,” he said. “All summer, and she’s been that way in practice and workouts, and she’s here all the time, and she wants to play at the next level. It’s really important to her.”

Her biggest challenge may be accepting the respect she’ll get from opponents. “She’s got to control her emotions when other teams aren’t going to pitch to her,” McHenry said, “because that’s going to happen a little bit, especially after the summer we had against a lot of our conference teams.”

Sophomore Emma Ellison returns at shortstop after starting there as a freshman. She settled into her role as a freshman varsity starter by the end of last season and became a valuable contributor down the stretch. She’ll look to continue that improvement this year. Senior Mia Carnes is back at second base. McHenry said Carnes hasn’t missed a beat in the field and he expects her to bat leadoff, but he wants a shorter swing with two strikes.

“She’s got to make contact,” he said. “She can swing with power and she can run. But when she gets two strikes, we cannot have a strikeout very often. We work on ‘inch, inch and an inch,’ which means an inch closer to the plate, an inch choked up on the bat, and an inch closer to the pitcher. And maybe still give us a good cut, but maybe not that full cut that you take all the time.”

Junior Lily Worthy has the inside track on playing first base as the season starts. Goeke could play there when she isn’t pitching, and Pitchford can play almost anywhere.

“I tell [Worthy] first base is involved in about every throw that happens on the infield,” McHenry said. “So you really have to be the best catcher that we have.”

Junior Maddie Carter is back behind the plate, and assistant coach Scott Umbarger has been working with her on her footwork. She has a full season of varsity experience now, and will be a consistent feature for Republic’s trio of pitchers.

Republic graduated three senior outfielders, all of them good defensively, which McHenry said was one of his bigger worries coming into the fall. But senior Kate Stulce, junior Amelia Beaver, senior Madi Chevalier and junior Myleigh Mooneyham have all tracked the ball well during summer play. Stulce has been steady in left and is working on her short game and bunting. Mooneyham has been good in center and is turning into a switch hitter, slapping from the left side and swinging with more pop from the right. Chevalier will likely play right field.

Some things will look different from a year ago. McHenry has changed how Republic calls first-and-third situations and where the defense throws the ball. He’s also pushed his baserunners to be more aggressive, forcing defenders to make quick decisions and possibly forcing mistakes.

“(We’re) probably taking a few more chances than what Coach Dishman did when he was coaching,” he said. “Not that we’ll necessarily do all of it, or do it a lot when we play. But it’s in your arsenal. And our girls are having fun with it. They’ve embraced everything that we’ve done.”

He said the players he uses on those plays are chosen for their judgment more than their speed.

“It’s not the fastest players that we ask to do that. It’s the girls that can run a little bit,” McHenry said. “But can you make a good decision and do what we want you to do? You have to read a ball out of a catcher’s hands. If she pump fakes it, you’ve got to get back.”

McHenry said the thing he’s watching for this fall has less to do with mechanics than with how his team responds when an inning gets away, especially because the team is so inexperienced at the varsity level.

“Can you stop the bleeding in a big inning when you gave up one or two runs, or is it going to be five or six or seven runs?” he said. “That’s kind of how our summer went early. One or two errors turned into four or five, or our pitcher kind of gave in and we gave up some hits. We didn’t fight hard enough at the plate.”

Wins matter to McHenry, and he said the standard Dishman and the coaches before him set makes them matter more. But he doesn’t plan to measure the season that way.

“Many, many teams have not won a district championship because they just don’t play good in the right game,” he said. “You win 31 games and don’t win a district, it’s disappointing.”

Republic opens with games in the Lead-Off Classic at the Miller Road fields this weekend.