When the Wellsville-Middletown softball team played the St. Louis Patriots in a home game on Sept. 19, it took on a homeschool program that started its second year of play.

“They reached out and said they wanted to try to play us,” W-M coach Alex Thull said. “I was like, ‘Yeah, go ahead.’ It’s nice to play schools our size once in a while.”

It was also nice that the Tigers left their home field with a victory that snapped a long losing streak. W-M defeated the Patriots to end a 28-game losing streak. The program’s last victory was on Sept. 17, 2022, when it beat Madison and Bucklin on the same day.

The Tigers lost their first seven games before topping the Patriots. They dropped all 17 games last year. W-M lost its final four games of the 2022 season. The program’s 2023 season was canceled because it didn’t have a full team.

W-M also celebrated its first home victory since Sept. 20, 2018, when it knocked off Mark Twain 3-2.

“It was big for the girls,” said Thull, who is in his second year as W-M coach. “Most of the girls who were last year were first-time players. The seniors we graduated played those years before and had that two years off and then came back. Now, we’re starting from scratch last year with those underclassmen. They’re now my juniors and sophomores. We picked up a couple of freshmen this year who played for the first-year junior high team. Winning helps everything because then the girls can see what they can do when everything clicks and they work and pitching gets right.”

The Tigers’ regular season is coming to a close. They were scheduled to play Sturgeon on Oct. 6 and Silex on Oct. 7. They will wrap up their home season on Oct. 9 against Wright City and travel to Madison the following day to conclude their regular season. W-M will compete in the Class 1, District 4 tournament at North Shelby this year.

The Tigers took a 1-12 mark into their game with Sturgeon. They gave up an average of 18 runs per game.

“We’re still very young and we’re still very inexperienced pitching wise,” Thull said. “So that makes us long innings where we walk a lot or hit some people.”
Seven W-M players had at least one hit in the contest against the Patriots. Sophomore Jade Thompson led the way with four hits. Juniors Aubrey Harmon, Jenna Collins and Elly Cash and sophomore Tessa Freeman each had two hits. The 17 runs scored marked a season high for W-M, which scored just four runs in its first seven contests.

Harmon was the winning pitcher. She leads a pitching staff that includes Cash, sophomore Paige Brashear and freshman Ava Geisler.

“Aubrey Harmon is our only true pitcher and works at it all of the time,” Thull said. “She has come a long way, but she is still pretty inconsistent with her spots. She puts a lot of pressure on herself because she wants to be so good for us. She just has so much more experience to gain before she can really be that person. She’s working at it and I can’t fault her for trying.”

The Tigers returned nine players – Cash, Brashear, Harmon, Collins, Freeman, Thompson, senior Lorelei Smith and sophomores Addison Nation and Legend Davis – from last year’s team. They were joined by five freshmen – Geisler, Emma Null, Julianna Dodd, Natalie Todd and Alexis Brennan – and all of them played with the W-M junior high school team, which started its first year of play last fall.

“They had a great off-season,” Thull said. “They came in all summer. All of my sophomores and my freshmen played in the Kiwanis League this year. It had been disbanded for a couple of years now. Really, the main issue with softball and baseball in this town is there has been no youth programs unless kids are leaving to go to travel ball elsewhere out of the area. Bringing that back and getting the Kiwanis league back was a huge deal.”

Thull said he’s already excited for the program for the next two years, since it is losing just one player to graduation.

“We have great girls,” Thull said. “I’d rather coach these girls who come up short night and night than coach some other girls who give me headaches. The culture is really what we focus on. I know that down the line when we get to next year and the year after that, this is going to be a much better program to be able to keep up.”