LYNN — It was a memorable softball season for Lynn Classical as the Rams finished the season 13-9, which included an upset victory in the state tournament over Lexington. When looking back at the season, head coach Joe Morin said the initial goal is to always get back to the tournament.
“We were able to get back in the state tournament, which is always a positive,” Morin said. “Division 1 is loaded in Massachusetts. We were able to beat Lexington who is a big program in a great conference, which was a big win for our program.”
According to Morin, Classical has made the postseason every year for the last 21-22 years.
“They’re expected to do well,” Morin said. “I told the girls I want to be a good program, not just a good team.”
Despite making the tournament, Morin said one of the team’s other goals was to win the conference.
“Our ultimate goal was to win our conference, which we fell just short of and we finished in second,” Morin said. “We lost a couple of competitive games to Everett and we split with Medford. However, girls played to the standard that we expect them to.”
Morin described his eight seniors as being great leaders who the Rams will have to replace going into next season.
“The hardest part is replacing the leadership,” Morin said. “Four or five seniors started at least one game for me this year. You obviously are losing a lot of skill, but we are really losing a lot of leadership. Even the players who don’t stick out on the stat sheet provide a lot of leadership.”
Morin pointed to Lily Newell as one of the leaders of the team.
“She might not stick out every day in the stat book, but she’s a leader at practice and is always working hard,” Morin said.
When looking back on the season, Morin was impressed by his team’s ability to score runs and defend with the best of them.
“Offensively we were pretty strong. We put up a lot of runs, especially in conference,” Morin said. “Defensively this was the best fielding percentage I ever had on a team. In one game we had nine errors, but if you take that out we were at 97%. We improved on our defense a lot compared to last year, which was something I wanted us to do, and they were tremendous.”
Morin mentioned two players that surprised him this season and who he expects to take another leap next season — junior Lauren Wilson and freshman Brooke Braswell.
“Lauren ended up hitting over .400 with three home runs,” Morin said. “She batted fifth all year and had a much bigger impact than I expected. I put her in right field because my pitcher throws pretty quick, so having her in right field to field those bloopers or slices would be tough for a lot of people, but she was tremendous.”
For Braswell, Morin was impressed with the freshman.
“I knew she was a pretty good player but as a freshman, she played first base for us every game and hit over .450,” Morin said. “That was unexpected and she was tremendous.”
Morin said he’ll always remember the state playoff game against Lexington.
“They were like 11 spots higher than us,” Morin said. “I don’t think a lot of people thought we could beat them, but we went out there and played tremendously. The girls were so pumped up on the bus afterwards.”
The Rams, behind Morin, will hope to repeat similar success next season.
