WCH Softball Caps Huge Turnaround With First Playoff Appearance!

The Wesley Chapel High (WCH) girls basketball team won eight more games this season than it did last season. The WCH football team, just two years removed from an 0-10 season, went 7-2. The Wiregrass Ranch High (WRH) football team made the playoffs for the first time since 2010.

However, when it came to the 2016-17 school year, there weren’t any high school teams in Wesley Chapel that turned things around quite like the WCH softball team did.

Buoyed by a bevy of youngsters and first-year coach Steve Mumaw, the Wildcats did the improbable this spring — they beat softball powerhouses Pasco, River Ridge and Land O’Lakes in one of Tampa Bay’s toughest districts, won 19 games and made it to the Class 6A Regional semifinals before losing 4-2 to the eventual State champion Gators.

“Now that it’s over and the tears are gone, we can reflect,’’ said Mumaw. “Land O’Lakes won the State championship, and we were pretty close to (beating) them. It could have been us.”

Depending upon how many players return —the new Cypress Creek Middle/High School zones are expected to claim at least a few players — the Wildcats have the makings of what could be a state contender the next few years.

That was hardly imaginable before 2017. Although they showed signs of promise last year, winning seven games in their best season ever to that point, the previous eight years had yielded records like 2-22, 2-21, 2-20, 1-22, 1-15 and 0-24. At one point, WCH lost 27 straight games and 43 of 44 over a three-span.

Things changed this spring with the infusion of some key freshmen, who meshed instantly with a talented crop of sophomores.

“We had high expectations,’’ said Mumaw, who has had two stints as the baseball coach and one as the athletic director at WCH. “I wouldn’t say we expected to get to the point we did, but we knew we were going to be a much-improved team.”

An Ace In The Circle

You don’t win in softball if you don’t have a good pitcher, and the Wildcats have a very good one in Jordan Almasy. The newcomer went 13-6 in the circle this year, including a complete game shutout over the Gators during the season, and striking out 130 batters in 116 innings.

“She was tremendous,’’ said Mumaw. “She was the reason we were what we were at the end of the season. The way she could just take another team and kind of dominate them was a key.”

The Wildcats got strong seasons from returning players like the coach’s daughter, senior Dana Mumaw (a .286 batting average and 16 RBI), as well as from sophomores Payton Hudson (.328), Ashley Nickisher (.367, 15 RBI) and Neely Peterson, who set a school record for home runs (3) and RBI (20), while hitting a team-high .443.

Peterson has to share both of those new school records with one of the talented freshmen who helped drive the Wildcats, Anna Margetis, who also added a .338 average to her exploits, and fellow frosh Morgan Herndon batted .370.

Herndon wasn’t even a starter at the beginning of the year, and came on late, as did so many of the Wildcats. Peterson, who hit in the middle of the lineup, was walked 17 times, as teams avoided her this season. But, once the rest of the lineup came around, that became a dangerous proposition. After driving in just one run during a nine-game stretch in the middle of the season, Peterson took advantage of a hot lineup, driving in 13 runs over the last 10 games.

“When they had to throw to her later in the season because girls were on base, she always came up with the hit to drive them in,” Mumaw said.

She wasn’t alone. In fact, after a season in which a school-record five players had 10 or more RBI, this spring, the Wildcats doubled that with 10 players with double figures in RBIs.

Mumaw says it was a complete team effort.

“It was enjoyable,’’ he said. “I wouldn’t say I did a better coaching job or anything, they did it all. I just had to stay out of their way.”