It’s been a solid year for Franklin JV softball.
While their varsity counterparts garner all the headlines, the JV Panthers quietly toil away, waiting patiently in the wings for their own shot at stardom. In a year filled with blowout wins and equally gut-wrenching losses, the team’s skipper says his players have done the yeoman’s work in preparing for varsity.
“We have a lot of things to work on, but the kids are very coachable and they’re doing their best,” said Troy Cousineau of his first year as JV head coach. “It’s mostly just working on hitting and fundamentals. I’m a big fan of working on fundamentals all the time, and they’ve come a long way – they’re doing great.”
As a varsity assistant for the past four years, Cousineau took over the JV team from fellow assistant Kellie Rogers this year, assisted by Jenna Snell. With a 4-5-1 record in a difficult Mountain Seven Conference, he says this year’s team had the kind of sluggers Panther fans have grown accustomed to.
“Hitting is definitely our strength – we’ve got very good hitters from the varsity all the way down to the JV,” said Cousineau. “The biggest thing we need to work on, varsity and JV is what I call ‘situational’: when you’ve got people on certain bases, what are we gonna do, how aggressive are we gonna be, base-stealing, and things like that.”
For the past several years Franklin has gained a well-earned reputation for churning out great hitters one after another. Due to unpredictable springtime weather and the program’s facilities at Macon Middle School, the skipper said this kind of specialization is understandable.
“If we had the perfect situation we would have a JV practice and a varsity practice, so especially the JV girls would get more time. But when you don’t have the fields or the hours in the day to do that, we have to practice them together,” he said. “What we’ve been trying to start doing is, I’ll take the JV girls in the batting cages and work with them on hitting, and [varsity head coach Bobby Bishop] will have the varsity on the field, and then we’ll switch. But, we haven’t had the chance to do that much. … Luckily we have beautiful hitting facilities inside that a lot of the high schools we go to don’t have.”
With their field often rendered unusable by rain, both teams spent plenty of time in Franklin’s batting cage this spring, which helped the JV Panthers knock 84 total hits including 26 for extra bases and a .444 team average. In addition to the plate, the team also lived up to the program’s reputation for strong infield defense.
“When the bases are loaded, younger kids – JV players, middle school players – tend to get in a panic,” said Cousineau. “It’s not a terrible situation because you have multiple choices you can go to, because there’s a force out at every base. They’ve learned that, ‘Hey, bases are loaded, we got this,’ and they’ve done great. Baserunning is another challenge: we’re always trying to remind them to be aggressive on the bases, but also pay attention to popups and be smart.”
In preparing JV players for the varsity stage, the results have spoken for themselves in recent years, with Franklin playing in the state playoffs in each of the last 18 years dating back to 2006. With the varsity team losing six key seniors to graduation this month, Cousineau says his JV Panthers should be up for the challenge.
“Some of them will be heading up that way, and some of them already dress out with the varsity and have an idea of what’s coming,” he said. “I’ve watched a couple middle school games and there are some really good ballplayers down there that are coming to JV, and some of them will move up to varsity. So, we’ll be able to fill those holes with the girls that are moving up.”