The Alliance High School softball team has come a long way from where they first began. Four years ago, the team had only won one game in the season; this year they’ve won 17 games out of 28. They beat the win record of twelve games in 2016. They beat that record by five more wins this year. During an interview with Coach Carlos Palomo, he had a few things about this year’s softball season.

When asked what his thoughts were about coming into coaching a losing team he answered, “When I was first offered the job, I thought this would be a good opportunity for me to get my feet wet into coaching, especially being a head coach. It was my first year teaching and I felt like it was going to be a good experience for me. Taking on a losing program, I knew I had my work cut out for me, especially coaching girls. It was a culture that I needed to establish and I knew it wasn’t going to all happen in a year. It takes some time because it’s a process. These girls have bought in and over time they’ve improved and come a long way.”

When asked what he thought about how much this team has accomplished over the years of him and his assistant coaches coaching he answered, “A ton of improvement. We’ve broke numerous records, for example the win record, team batting averages have improved, overall everything has improved and it starts by being coachable and having good attitude and giving good effort. These girls have been able to do that. Many, many, many hours of offseason work has been put in and I think that’s why we are at the level that we’re at today.”

When asked what he thought about if he thought this team is capable of winning state and how they would get to that point he explained, “Yes, I believe this team could make it to state. They’ve made a tremendous amount of improvement this season from the start to where we are now. It’s going to take us being consistent defensively and being able to execute our bunt coverages, being able to have every single one of these girls do their job, and in the batter’s box it’s just going to come down to us manufacturing runs and doing our job. The talents there, the potentials there it just depends on our attitude and effort. I’m confident in myself and in these girls that we’re going to compete at a high level in districts. We’ll come out swinging.”

When asked what he thought about what it’s like coaching girls high school softball and boys baseball and if there are different attitudes and efforts between the two he answered saying,  “I feel like over the course of three years coaching girls it’s gotten a lot better. There’s not much of a difference, there’s different styles of the game how to play, how to defend, and bunt coverages. As far as coaching girls and boys it’s attitude is one of the biggest things that come into effect. I feel like girls can be a little bit more challenging with their attitudes rather than boys. But they both respond to me when I’m coaching them.

When asked what he thought about what he would say are some difficulties about coaching he explained, “Good question. Handling attitudes that’s probably one of the toughest. Getting kids to have confidence in themselves at times especially after they fail or after they make an error, getting kids to respond after failure can be challenging as well. I feel like over the course of these past three years we’ve gotten better and better each and every year at those things I just listed. It just comes down to these kids executing and I feel like all these girls are capable of helping the team out and I do my best to put them in a position to be successful, then it’s just about us executing. One more thing that’s difficult about coaching is drama.”

When asked what he thought about when some of the girls took what they learned from practice and executed their skills into game when under pressure, he answered, “I think that’s something that we can always get better at but just in one year I think we’ve definitely proved that mentality in the 7th inning that will to win that fight in the last few innings and being able to handle adversity. These kids have gotten a lot better at that. I think that obviously what’s helped is getting more repetitions, getting stronger not only mentally and physically but just believing in their coaching staff and believing in themselves has been able to help these kids be successful in handling pressure situations. It’s part of the game and they’ve gotten a good handle on how to respond.”

After districts, Coach Mo explained, “Another successful season, we’ve broke more records. I’m honored to be these girls coach. There’s always room to improve and I think as a team we know what need to do going into offseason. Its to improve our defense and being consistent, but I’m proud of the way these girls handle adversity throughout the year. Again I’m honored to be there coach, it’s been a fun year.”  

Being a member of the softball team, I would have to agree with everything Coach Mo said. We had a great season!