BROOMFIELD – Broomfield Eagles softball coach Kale Gilmore and his returning varsity players have had since last October to stew about what happened to them at Aurora Sports Park.
The Eagles entered last year’s Class 5A state tournament with high hopes after a brilliant run through the Front Range League that saw them tie for the league title with Horizon and earn the No. 2 in Aurora.
But those championship hopes were dashed on Day 1 by Cherokee Trail and it has been stuck in their craw since.
All memory of that day might very well have been wiped away on Tuesday afternoon. The Eagles, ranked No. 5 in Class 5A, opened the season in style, with a 10-0 victory — pounding out 13 hits in the process — over defending Class 4A champion Holy Family.
“Last year was a tough ending, but there is only one winner at the end of the day anyway,” said Gilmore, who will also take over the reign of the Eagles baseball program in the spring. “But we have moved on and it is some of the same girls, and they are hungry.
“But we also have a lot of young girls and I am really happy with how they are coming around. There are some freshmen out here and girls that don’t have a ton of varsity experience, so to start out with a team like that and play the way they did, I’m happy for them and it gives us something to build on.”
The Broomfield (1-0) bats got to work early against sophomore Kaylee McDonald, but after two hits in the opening inning they had nothing to show for it.
In the second inning, the Eagles would get all the run support they needed for junior pitcher Brianna Fiala. One out hits from 8-9 hitters Maycee Bricker and Izaballa Mikelson set the table for the top of the Broomfield lineup and it was delivered. Senior Elizabeth Thorngren drove in the first run of the game and then two hitter later, sophomore Areana Rivera’s bloop hit to centerfield drove in two more runs.
“I thought our approach was good and we are a different team,” said Gilmore, who got multiple hit games from Thorngren, Rivera, Emmie Meeks and Bricker. “We are not the type of team that is going to go out and hit multiple home runs in a game. We are going to have to hit a lot of singles and string things together and do all of the little things right.”
Fiala, who struck out seven in her five innings of work, only ran into trouble once and it was in the top of the third. Holy Family strung together three straight infield hits to load the bases with one out. But Fiala got Annika Manzanares and Abby Edwards to strike out to end the threat and preserve the shutout.
The Tigers, ranked No.2 in Class 4A, opened the season over the weekend at Regis Jesuit and got wins over Valor Christian and Regis to start the 2021 campaign. Tuesday’s loss will go down as a learning experience for coach Moriah Nguyen and her new look Tigers going forward.
“They just came out as the better team today and their pitcher definitely had us on our heels and our defense didn’t come out as strong as we would have liked,” Nguyen said. “We will come out better next time, but they got us today.”
Freshman Izzy Arroyo had three hit for the Tigers from the leadoff spot.