Young but undaunted, the 2025 Russellville High School varsity softball team is aiming to continue its momentum from the successes of the 2024 season, a campaign that saw the Lady Golden Tigers eliminated in the North Regional tournament.
Senior-less this year, Russellville will be looking to a large group of experienced underclassmen to help propel the Lady Golden Tigers this time around.
“We really wanna build off the success of last year, even though we lost the three seniors that were invaluable to us and led in just about every offensive and defensive category for us. We have a good core group of returners coming back. Defensively in the outfield we’ve got two starters coming back: Ticelee Gholston and Khristyan Huerta. Khristyan will also serve time behind the plate as a backup catcher,” Russellville head coach Rick Lawson said.
“My oldest player is a junior and I’ve just got a couple of those. Replacing my seniors from last season—Jaycee (Moore) in the circle, Emma Campbell behind the plate, and Paislee James in center field—that’s a challenge. But we have some younger players who will fill those roles,” Lawson said.
“We are a really young team. A majority of our team is freshmen and sophomores, but they all have good experience playing coming in from last year and traveling with us. Their transition has been really good so far. We’ve also added some players that didn’t play last year like Bri McCulloch and Blevyn Sappington, so they’ve added some more athleticism to what we had last year, too.”
Like many team spring teams around the county, Russellville began its preseason preparation without some of its multisport athletes. So far, that has helped with the development of the much younger players and created some competition.
“We’ve got quite a few softball girls that have been out there playing basketball and cheerleading, so it’s been a great opportunity for our middle school kids to get some really great practices in and it’s given the non-basketball players—high school players—a good opportunity to gain an edge,” Lawson said.
When all the Lady Golden Tigers get together, Lawson thinks Russellville’s offense will be its strength this season.
“I think our offense is gonna be our real strong suit,” he said. “We’ve done a good job recognizing the strike zone and knowing what we wanna do at the plate. Our base running should be a plus for us, also. That athletic ability on the base paths will be big for us this season.”
On the defensive side, the RHS head coach said there is some uncertainty given the multisport student-athletes the team has been missing during preseason work, adding those queries can only really be answered when the whole team hits the diamond.
“You have some thoughts inside your head about where everyone will be, but until you physically get everyone out there there will be some question marks about what it’s gonna look like,” Lawson said.
Lawson said Russellville’s success this year, at least early on, will depend on how quickly the team comes together.
“We’ve got experienced players, it’s just how fast can they mature and how quickly can we get them to gel,” he said. “Offensively we’re doing a phenomenal, phenomenal job. It’s just defensively where we’ve got question marks and it’s gonna be about finding that chemistry and where everyone fits in.
“In our area I think Lawrence County is probably the favorite, but I think we can give them a run for their money this year. It’s all gonna depend on how our girls mature and how quickly they can gel together, especially defensively,” Lawson added.
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