It was a year to remember for Franklin’s 8U softball All-Stars.
After winning the N.C. District 5 Tournament last month, the team recently traveled to Lake Norman for the 8U Little League State Tournament. In advancing to the tournament semifinal, the Franklin All-Stars ended their season as one of the top four teams in the state.
“We formed the team right there at the end of May, so they practiced together for a little over two weeks for the District Tournament,” said head coach Ethan Garett. “From the parents’ standpoint, there’s a lot of time that’s dedicated. Five days a week you’re practicing, because you’re trying to grind and grind and grind. [It’s] two-and-a-half, three-hour practices, for eight-year-olds. … What’s crazy about this team is that we would practice two-and-a-half, three hours, and at the end of that practice they’re still hungry, still wanting to go run bases.”
Selected to the roster from Franklin’s six 8U teams soon after the spring regular season, the All-Star squad is made up of Franklin’s 12 best seven and eight-year-old players. Shortly thereafter, coaches realized this year’s team could be special.
“I had it brought up to me from one of my assistant coaches, Michael Lambert,” said Garrett. “He’s got an older daughter that plays on the middle school team, and he said that it’s amazing just how advanced this team was compared to back in 2018 [when] his daughter competed at the state level. … They’re just a great group of girls. You could just tell that they had the drive for it – they wanted to be there.”
While Franklin has represented District 5 several times in recent State Tournaments, the players’ skills and knowledge of the game seem to have progressed even in the last few years. In their first District 5 tournament game against Great Smokies (comprised of Jackson, Swain and Graham counties), Franklin showed their mettle on the mental side as well.
“First inning against Great Smokies, we went down seven runs in the first inning, and they went unanswered,” said Garrett. “Then we came back and put up five runs in the second and held them to two. We put up three runs in the third inning, and I think four runs in the fourth. … We put one up in the fifth, and held them to no runs in the sixth inning. It was like 18-13 going into the bottom of the sixth, and we came back out and the umpire told us, ‘Hey, you gotta put up five runs to tie the game or six to win.’ We put up six runs and walked off with a win, so it was a really good game.”
Following their close call with Great Smokies, Franklin met smoother waters the next two games, beating Waynesville 18-1 and Transylvania County 14-3. In the district title game, they defeated Henderson County 10-8, after which they received high praise from the Henderson coaches.
“After that game was over, one of their coaches come up to me and he said, ‘I’m gonna tell you right now, that team that you have is the most disciplined 8U team I have ever seen in my life,’” said Garrett. “He said, ‘I wish our girls were half as disciplined as that. The ball can get hit to them, and it doesn’t matter who gets the ball – they don’t stand there with it, they know exactly what they’re gonna be doing with it as soon as the ball comes to them.’ … It blew my mind just how fast they could pick that up.”
After outscoring their District 5 foes 61-30 and another one-off tournament to get ready for state, the team traveled to Huntersville to compete for a state title. There, the 12-team field was split into three pools of four, with the top two teams from each pool advancing to bracket play.
“The first game we played was against South Durham, and we beat them 26-4 right out of the gate,” said Garrett. “We came back that evening and played Person County – really, really good team. We beat them 28-15, and that was a really good game. We held them at three runs for a long time, and then our girls – the heat had got to them. Let’s face it, we’re from Western North Carolina; you go anywhere east of Black Mountain and it’s a totally different world for us. They kind of got broke down a little bit and made some bad plays, and I had one that just was not feeling well and actually started running a fever during that game. But we won that game, and we wound up playing Northwest Forsyth the following day and beat them 18-7.”
In routing their first three opponents, Franklin looked like a tournament favorite, finishing pool play as one of three teams without a loss and scoring more runs than any other squad. In bracket play, they drew a familiar foe for a second time.
“We get paired up with Person again, and this time we beat them 14-2, so it was more along the lines of the way the first game should have been,” said Garrett. “The next evening we played Pitt County – really good team, good group of coaches, good group of kids. … We start playing Pitt, and our girls, I think they just … it’s 8U – some days they’re on, some days they’re off. I think this was just one of those days that they were off. I couldn’t pitch; I think I looked and I had already threw around 350 pitches in those five games, and I was worn out.”
Battling fatigue from their rigorous schedule the prior few days, Franklin fell behind 14-2 in the bottom of the second. Needing three more runs to stave off the 10-run mercy rule and keep the game alive, Franklin mounted a promising fourth-inning rally.
“We played that inning and got a little bit of a rally started, and they actually called ‘time’ twice during that inning and pulled all their infielders in, and the head coach was talking to them,” said Garrett. “I think it was just to slow our girls’ momentum down, and it worked. It got them off their rocker just a little bit, and they were like ‘Why are they doing this?’ – just a heads-up play from their coach. It’s just like I tell my kids and players: softball is a physical sport, but I see it as more of a mental game as well as physical. I said, ‘There’s things that you do, and there’s things that other teams will do just to try to throw you off just a little bit, to break your concentration.’”
In falling 14-4 in the state semifinal, Franklin finished among the top four 8U teams in the state. All told, the team racked up 128 hits (including 33 doubles, 5 triples and 11 home runs), 90 runs and 42 runs allowed in just five games at the State Tournament. Upon returning home, Garrett wished to thank the many local businesses who offset costs for the trip, and credited his team for consistently punching above their weight.
“I’ve never seen anything like it. If they were nervous, they didn’t show it – I believe we could have pulled them off the bus and put them on the field with the Atlanta Braves, and they would have been no different,” he said. “Some of these other girls, they’re on Little League teams just like us, but you have some of these teams that have girls that play extra on travel teams, which is fine – I wish we had that availability here. … It’s just amazing how we can take a county of what, around 36, 37,000, and go and compete against counties across the state of maybe 120,00, 130,000.”