The softball team has wrapped up its season, finishing third in the region with a record of 8-4 and an overall record of 9-13. Similarly, last season the team ended third in the region with a record of 11-3 and an overall record of 13-5.
The 2025 season marks the second year in a row that the team has qualified for the state playoffs, where they played Allatoona twice on Oct. 13. The team lost both games 13-1 and 18-0. Despite this, head coach John Bookspun is proud of how far the team has come.
“We had great effort and spirit from our young team of freshmen and sophomores,” Bookspun said. “Everyone was consistently in the proper positioning on every play. We had our first lead ever in the playoffs 1-0 in the second inning of the first game.”
Like last year, the Knights were the third seed team, which comes with its own set of challenges. Bookspun explained that when a team is in this situation, the most important thing to do is put their best foot forward.
“What’s hard is when you make the state playoffs and you’re a third seed, and you play a number two seed from an hour or two away from here,” Bookspun said. “It feels like you’re playing a college team, you show up and they are just so incredible. So you play doubleheader, and you give them everything you got, and you try to improve the second game you play them.”
Throughout the season, the team has done very well in the region games, but still struggles when it comes to out-of-region matches.
“We are now one of the best Atlanta Public School softball teams, and yet, we have a long way to go to get as good as the teams around the state that are at the top end of the playoffs,” Bookspun said.
Bookspun intentionally scheduled games against schools located further away, as they are more competitive.
“Almost everybody we play right around here, we beat pretty easily,” Bookspun said. “Because of that, we lined up a bunch of games this year against teams that are not in our region. This is just so we can get a sense of how good the rest of the state can be.”
It is common for the Knights to play each region team, and often non-region teams, at least twice throughout the season. Additionally, many on the team believe that these non-region matches are an effective way to measure the team’s progress throughout the season.
“Because we played a lot of non-region teams at the beginning of the season, and we’ve played a lot of non-region teams at the end of the season, we can definitely see that the team has grown a lot,” senior captain Madison Hull said. “I can see we’ve improved a little bit with everything, both on offense and defense.”
Freshman Katie Tedder has specifically seen improvements in the team’s fielding ability over the season.
“At the beginning, our fielding was a little bit sloppy,” Tedder said. “But as the season has gone on, it’s gotten a lot better. When we first started, there was just limited communication, but I feel like it’s way better now, and I’m really happy about it.”
Overall, communication has been a major contributor to the team’s success. Freshman Annie Evans looks to her teammates for both support and criticism.
“Our team community is great,” Evans said. “We cheer each other on a lot, and we tell each other what we can improve. The more feedback we give, the better we play.”
The team captains aim to focus on team engagement during both tough times and successes.
“We just keep each other hype and keep each other going,” Hull said. “It’s definitely important to keep the energy up, especially if the whole team becomes defeated. The way you play on the field reflects that. So keeping each other cheered on and making sure the energy on the team stays up is super important in helping us win games.
The team has many ideas on how to improve for next season and Bookspun is excited for the coming season.
“In the end, we learned a lot about what we need more of for next year, and that’s pitching and hitting, but we’ve got that coming,” Bookspun said. “ We have great pitchers coming back healthy and up from Howard, and midtown bought us a new high speed pitching machine that’ll allow us to upgrade our hitting skills.”
