West Muskingum Relying On Culture, Senior Leadership in 2025
ZANESVILLE, OH
The softball team at West Muskingum is ready to take the diamond once more, with a new season on the way, as the Lady Tornadoes are looking to regain their league title. But that begins off the diamond.
“We work really hard on developing our culture within our team. So far so good. But, but that’s things to be done” says manager Josh Bobo. “It’s hard work to build it up. It’s really easy to tear it down. So we keep reminding the kids and do the right things and, and so far, they’ve done everything we asked. It’s a really good group as far as chemistry goes. So I think that’s going to help us with going into the season.”
It’s a team that lost two all league and district talents last year in Cadence Puckett and Kate Foster, but are more than ready to make up for it with three new seniors ready to lead the way.
Bobo continues, “You’re talking about two of the most prolific hitters ever at this high school, so you’re not just going to replace them with a couple players. But we do have a really strong senior class, Lydia Huey, Addy Antonetz, and Kadie Bare have played a lot of softball here together. They’ve clearly emerged as leaders this off season.”
“We have to mesh together and come as a team and work together, play together. We just need the freshmen to work together and, you know, jump right in and do what they need to do” adds Antonetz.
“We definitely have a lot of freshmen that will compete this year and are ready to play. Last year, Kate was a big leader for us and I definitely learned from her” states Bare.
Huey says, “We’re going to work really hard. I think our team meshes really well together, we’re all friends and we get along well, so taking that into the fact of us playing good together, like us as a team, as a whole on the field is like really, really strong offensively and defensively.”
Despite another strong 18-win season in 2024, West M finished second in the small school division to Morgan. But the Lady Tornadoes are more than ready to right that wrong in 2025.
“We feel like our culture will kind of dictate what we earn. We have a group of athletes that are very capable, and we’re excited to see how this turns out” claims Bobo.
“They expect a lot out of themselves, and we’re right there with them.”
West Muskingum gets its season started against Garaway at noon on Saturday, March 22nd.
