By: Mohammed Ramzanali and Jack Wallace

As the Westborough High School girls’ softball season wraps up, there are many questions to be answered for next year. This year the team finished 4-16 which is one win less than last year. However, Coach Greg Rota remarks that the team has improved from last season.

“We did better than expected” said Rota ecstatically, “Our biggest issue was our defense but we were a great hitting team, we had a strong offense.

” In addition to having a weak defense, the team didn’t even have a pitcher till February of this year. Rota also states, “This year Cassie Domeij started pitching for us in February like legitimately trying to learn the position and get better and she did a really good job for us and we pulled off four wins which we’re really happy with because we had no pitcher going into this season.”

Although he was fairly satisfied with the outcome of this season he knows that there is a lot of room for improvement

Improving the defense is the number one priority that Coach Rota has in mind for next season. He wants the team to be well-rounded and to be able to compete better with some of the teams they couldn’t keep up with this year.

“Next year we just need to improve our defense.” Rota says “Our real issue was just defense. We had a great hitting team this year, unfortunately we lost a lot of games by giving up too many runs.” Coach Rota also mentions with excitement that the middle school will be passing on four very good pitchers which he believes he can use to his disposal.

The Rangers will be moving down a division from Midwach A to Midwach B. Rota anticipates that his team will do much better in this division and will have a better chance of having a winning record. Graduating two players, having seven returning starters, dropping down a division, possibly adding four new pitchers to the rotation, and having an immense amount of experience on one team seems like the recipe for success. They will have a larger number of seniors who will be able to lead the team and provide proper and much needed guidance to the younger players who will be new to the system. Current junior and varsity starter Sidney Berg states that it is all about teamwork. “We’ll just focus on keeping them positive and helping them notice our teams weaknesses so that we can work on improving ourselves as a whole.” She agrees that the Rangers don’t have the strongest team, but by creating a positive and fun environment she believes that success will come their way.

So does the Westborough High School varsity softball team have the potential, the skill, even the capability of achieving their fading dream of having a winning record? As of right now, it definitely looks like it. Only time will tell since the 2016 softball season just ended a few weeks ago. Key Seniors, including Berg, will have to step up to the plate and lead the team to success next season.