Softball squad enjoys successful season in Tackett’s return

For the first time since their magical year of 2011, the Tippecanoe Red Devils softball team won at least 22 games and finished the year with a solid second-place finish in the Miami Valley League behind perennial power Greenville. There was a lot of success this year according to head coach Charles Tackett, who made his return to Tipp and immediately put them back on the map alongside the top teams in the area.

As for Tackett, he felt this year was a successful one for the Red Devils and it all started with a big scrimmage against a powerhouse from over in Darke County.

“Expectations in my mind were exceeded this year with a lot of different girls coming together and bought into what we wanted to do as a program,” Tackett said, who won his 300th career game as a varsity softball coach. “The girls did an excellent job at that and having a common goal of wanting to win games.”

“The second scrimmage of the season this year we played Tri Village. They just came off of the regional finals last year and we beat them in the scrimmage. That was the point where we could be pretty good this year. We won a lot of big games this year and it got the girls to the point where they knew that by competing against a team like Tri Village it got us to where we wanted to work and buy in even more.” All Tri Village did this year was finish 30-0 and claim the state championship.

Tackett mentioned the early season goals for the team and that each of them were met by the girls.

“We talked about the girls having to have structure, be disciplined, be coachable, and they exceeded all of those things throughout the season,” Tackett said. “These kids did a good job of coming to a common goal, win ball games and do things right.”

With Greenville running the table in the MVL, the Red Devils finished second. Tackett was pleased with the conference and how his teams battled with the Green Wave in both games this season.

“We rolled into the Greenville games 9-0 but we had not been challenged yet,” Tackett said. “We had to start playing faster, and in the first game at Greenville we lost 2-0. It was the first game where we faced a girl with that kind of velocity and it showed. We didn’t put the ball in play and the girls started swinging at bad pitches.”

“The next game Greenville came here and we were hitting the ball well and the game was 3-3 in the fifth. They brought in their number two pitcher and we could not time her up. The 8-3 score does not indicate how well we played in that game.”

The Red Devils saw several of their seniors earn postseason honors, starting with the Tipp shortstop Emily Aselage, who had a great season.

Aselage was named second-team all-Ohio with only committing three errors all season. Also pitcher Ella Henn was honorable mention all-Ohio.

Joining those two on the all-conference team were Gracie Raiff, Jocelyn Shelton, Roo Snell and Kyla Fry.