KALISPELL — Rain or shine, the Kalispell Glacier softball team is working hard to continue competing at the state championship level it was at last season.
However, with a fresh crop of new starters and first-year head coach Gary Evans at the helm, the journey to the mountaintop will be a challenging one.
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“It's like a whole new year to us this year,” Evans said. “We did graduate six seniors last year — and we do have one of our seniors back, unfortunately, injured — so we're trying to replace quite a few of them, and thankfully, it looks like we'll be able to replace most of them. You can't replace the heart of a state championship, though.”
Although it is his first year as head coach, Evans has been with the softball program for years.
His experience has given returning players such as center fielder Karley Allen confidence in his ability to lead.
“He's been in the program, just been around a lot, and he knows a lot about the game,” Allen said. “We all have different bonds with him, I would say, and so it's fun to do a lot of the same things, but we also have done a lot of different things this year.”
And that confidence from the upperclassmen has trickled down to the younger players who have been asked to fill big roles this season.
Pitcher Olivia Warriner said she is impressed with the performance of the young players so far.
“Probably a big step up for most of the girls, especially like Ava Grady, played on our team last year. She's doing really good with pitching and everything like that,” Warriner said. “Then a lot of the other spots, I mean, it's all new girls, but they've all stepped up into the spot pretty good."
With his athletes stepping up, coach Evans said the most important thing for him to do now is build a winning culture for the Wolfpack.
“The athletes are very good at their positions,” Evans said. “They've been trained well. Now it's just our job to create a team environment, make sure each person buys into a team, because I think that's what I saw over the last several years, is the team came first.”
