The girls had several chances to give up. They could’ve stopped trying and turned their focus somewhere else, but they didn’t. When the going got tough this year, the Fountain Hills High School softball team weathered the storm, and they gave all they had until the last out of the season.

The Falcons (1-15) finished the season on Monday, April 24, with a 11-0 loss to No. 8 Bourgade Catholic (13-4). It was the only time the Falcons were held scoreless in a game this year, and interim head coach Chris Peterson was able to make the girls hold their heads high in the team huddle afterward.

“Bourgade’s a good program, they know what they’re doing over there,” Peterson said. “For our girls to show up and play with what they know, against a team as good as that, I have to tip my hat to them. Even though we lost, we were up against a big wall there. That pitcher was outstanding.”

The Falcons played five games under Peterson and won 15-5 over Scottsdale Christian (2-11) on senior night on April 17. The Falcons scored 44 combined runs over those five games, and they had only scored 59 runs in their previous 11 games, including tournaments.

“I learned that we needed to have fun to win out there,” Peterson said. “I aimed for fun, and I hope they had fun, and we got a win.”

The Falcons had a coaching change 12 games into the year after an Arizona Interscholastic Association (AIA) bylaw infraction and they forfeited six consecutive games from March 27 to April 11. They also forfeited two games prior to the coaching change, with one being due to a lack of available Falcon players.

During the six-game forfeit stretch, the girls convinced each other to stick with the team until the end, and they persuaded others to join the flock as well.

The Falcons got six girls to join the team so they could finish out the season with a full roster. The midseason additions pushed the Falcons over the necessary number and gave them rotational players they didn’t have before. The acquisitions included seniors LJ Holland and Alexis Ibarra, juniors Alicia Ibarra and Savannah Nunez, sophomore Seilah Smith and freshman Zoe Jagodzinski.

Jagodzinski is one of 10 Fountain Hills High School students who qualified as a three-sport athlete and played each sport from beginning to end. She became the only four-sport athlete because she played varsity softball and junior varsity (JV) beach volleyball this spring, varsity basketball in the winter, and JV indoor volleyball last fall.

Athletic director Evelyn Wynn and girls basketball coach Amanda Baca worked with Peterson to help fill out the roster. Five of the six additions played basketball for Baca this winter, and all six of them found a way to contribute to the team.

“These girls came out and worked hard since we’ve started together,” Peterson said. “We’ve seen quite a turnaround…We’ve now built in a structure, a system here, and it’s nice to see them grow within that system.”

The Falcons started the year with four returning players from last season, and all of them stuck it out until the end. Senior Mia Duda was able to earn and commit to a college scholarship last fall during her club softball season, but junior Hailey Chandler and sophomores Sammantha Hughes and Shania Rivera have unanswered questions about the future of the program and their softball careers.

Peterson has been teaching in the district for over 15 years and had worked with the baseball program before, but this was his first softball coaching experience. He helped the players work on the basics and said everyone became a better ball player in the last few weeks, but he’s not sure what the future holds either.

“Overall, I feel like I personally attained the goals I wanted to reach, which was just a win or two and then also just build up a sense of a program,” Peterson said. “What a program can be, how it can function, and just see if they can grow from there.”

The players kept smiling through the end of their season. They found ways to stay positive in defeat, and they are cautiously optimistic about the future. As far as the roster goes, there are up to 13 players that could return next year.

Fountain Hills High School administration reported the bylaw infraction to the AIA, per AIA rules. The AIA can enact stricter penalties on a school if infractions go unreported, and the AIA executive board was supposed to have a hearing on Monday, April 17. The executive board tabled their discussion on Lawrence Hughes until their last meeting of the 2022-23 year, which will be on Monday, May 15.