“I beg your pardon. I never promised you a rose garden. Along with the sunshine, there has to be a little rain sometime.” — Lynn Anderson, 1971
A milestone was quietly reached in the annals of local sports this week when the Wayland softball team dropped a doubleheader against Middleville Thornapple Kellogg. The defeats insured that the Lady Wildcats would fail to win or share the O-K Gold Conference championship for the 15th straight season. The streak of astonishing domination was ended.
To be sure, it was inevitable, for all good things must end someday. And Bobby Knight didn’t really have it right when he boasted, “We don’t rebuild. We just reload.”
Yet Cheri Ritz and the Wayland softball program made an impressive run, the likes of which in Michigan are difficult to match. You had to figure that the well someday would have to run dry.
Yet the Lady Wildcats, with just one senior on the roster, still managed to finish at 9-3 in league play and 16-16 overall. They did a lot of damage to opponents with good hitting and two freshmen pitchers.
We cannot focus too much on the youth of this year’s time. We have to understand that Middleville Thornapple Kellogg, under the leadership of Tom Hudson, has built a solid winner, a team that went undefeated in the league and recorded an impressive 25-4 overall record. The Trojans didn’t exactly sneak up, either. They shared the Gold crown with the ‘Cats a year ago.
I’m almost certain that Ritz, who has amassed more than 900 softball coaching victories in her career, has already developed a motto of promise — “We’ll be back!”
Furthermore, I contend Ritz did as good a coaching job this spring as she ever has, making a young and inexperienced ballclub more than competitive.
The youth of the Lady Wildcats this season mirrors a puzzling trend for women’s athletics at Hopkins, Martin and Wayland this past winter and spring. All three schools have demonstrated a youth movement that very well could usher in more glory days.
Martin won a district championship in girls’ basketball, though Doug MacVean’s roster had no seniors.
Hopkins basketball, under John Robinson, included just one senior, point guard Kennedy Helderop, whom longtime sports observer Pete Arnsman flatly insisted is the best ever in Lady Vikings’ history.
On a side note, it has been heartwarming to see Kennedy’s younger sister, Evangelina, overshadowed on the court, come into her own in track and field, enough to win conference and regional top honors in the 400-meter run.
The Hopkins softball team is chock full of freshmen, sophomores and juniors in a 19-8 season and coach Amy Funk’s crew will make a run at perennial Silver champ Calvin Christian, maybe like TK did against Wayland.
The Wayland girls’ basketball squad, undergoing its third year of rebuilding, had a few quality seniors, but the top scorers on the team both were sophomores. Add freshman star Emma 
Ludema, one of the freshman pitchers for Ritz, and you you have the makings of an interesting season ahead.
Fans of women’s athletics in Martin, Hopkins and Wayland have a lot to look forward to, even though I have seen many depressing instances in which girls came on the scene with great successes as freshmen and sophomores, only to flatline at juniors and lose their special talent by the end of their prep careers.
Perhaps the title of the ghost-written Joe Namath book from 50 years best applies: “I Can’t Wait until Tomorrow Because I Get Better Looking Every Day.”
COVER PHOTO: A very promising high jumper for Wayland girls’ track is sophomore Madelyn Probst. (Photo courtesy of Josh Cline)
