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Charlottesville softball finds a new direction

Instead of frowns, there are smiles. Instead of frustration, there is laughter. Instead of yelling, there is learning.

And why wouldn’t there be? For the first time in eight years for Charlottesville High’s softball program, winning is a part of the equation.

“I wanted to cry,” said Charlottesville junior Kate Kammauff of the first win. “Because I’ve gone so many years and we haven’t won a game since I’ve been here. This is what I’ve been waiting on.”

Charlottesville won four games this season, ending that eight-year winless stretch with a March 17 win over Waynesboro 5-2. The last win before the Black Knights’ triumph over Waynesboro exists almost as an urban legend in the program.

“I think the last time they won — when I was in eighth grade there was a senior and they won her freshman year,” Kammauff said.

Charlottesville has been through a frustrating, dismal stretch, regularly changing coaches and suffering through bouts of attrition during each season. Now that’s part of the past because first year head coach Clay Ferneyhough has changed all that.

“I have 27 young ladies still playing with me at the end of the season and I’m very excited about that,” Ferneyhough said.

Ferneyhough was a longtime fixture on the local Little League, Babe Ruth and softball youth scenes before helping start the middle school baseball program in Charlottesville. He was a key part of the Piedmont Little League, going above and beyond the call of duty by picking players up for practice or games. Fernyhough’s passion for the game is infectious — he wants to make baseball or softball as fun for the players as it is for him, and that hasn’t changed as he moved from the youth level to the high school game.

That approach has allowed him to pull off one of the most elusive of tasks for a new coach — making the seniors believe. It’s often easier to get the younger players in a program on board with a regime change, but seniors who have been beaten up by a program’s hard times can be a tough sell. Kyra Brock, Julie Smick and Ashley Nowell haven’t let that be the case for Charlottesville though.

The trio of seniors bought into Ferneyhough’s approach in a big way, and at least one of them, Brock, knew as soon as the Black Knights finally hit the grass after being stuck in the gym because of snow.

“The first time we stepped on the field, I could just tell it would be a lot different,” Brock said. “You can ask my mom, I went home and I was like ‘we’re going to be okay this year, I’m excited.”

When the seniors bought in, things turned around more quickly than anyone would’ve thought. And to them, it meant more than it could possibly have to anyone else who hadn’t been through years of frustration.

“Every year it’s been a challenge,” Smick said. “I didn’t believe that we won at first, it just didn’t hit me. I can’t describe it.”

Smick has been solid at second base, and brings an unfiltered joy to the game. She’s one of the few players who have been in the program the last four years without interruption. Undeterred by the losing, Smick has stayed with the Black Knights, and her patience — and hard work — was rewarded with a memorable senior season.

Brock played in eighth grade and returned to the program as a junior, and she’s seen a complete change in how the players treat each other and have melded together over the course of the year.

“It’s a lot of different personalities,” Brock said. “A lot. Maybe one time we bumped heads, but we stayed together and overcame it.”

Nowell, a solid player for Charlottesville’s girls basketball team, is a stalwart in centerfield. She tore her ACL and missed her junior year of softball.

The trio is a big reason that Ferneyhough’s approach was immediately accepted. He gave the group of players a list of dos and don’ts at a preseason meeting rooted largely in respect, and the leaders — as well as the rest of the roster — put them into practice quickly.

“They do not get down on each other, they do what they can to pick them up,” Fernyhough said. “It’s kind of contagious.”

While those three seniors graduate, they leave a legacy that’s a complete about face from what it would’ve been a year ago. They’ve jumpstarted a revolution in the program, and now they’re passing that brushed up legacy on to a promising group of younger players. Kammauff, a junior shortstop, should serve as a solid senior leader next year, having anchored the infield this season. There’s also Ferneyhough’s daughter, Ashton, the sophomore pitcher who has been a big part of the program since eighth grade and started this year for the Black Knights. Ferneyhough gave the Black Knights a much needed steady hand in the circle, which came as a particularly big relief for Nowell.

“She’s been playing, like, forever, and pitching forever,” Nowell said. “She’s helped out a lot because we haven’t had a steady pitcher for a long time. They had me on it in 10th grade and that wasn’t good.”

There’s even help coming from the middle school level according to Ferneyhough, and that should help continue the resurgence of the program. Playing together for years clearly helped this team find its way, and having a strong feeder program should play a crucial role in the program’s future success.

“Normally half the team is different every year,” Kammauff said. “It was really nice to have this team that we’ve kind of grown up with. We’re more friends with each other, in previous years there’s been a lot of girls more interested in starting fights with people. We’re really focused on being a team.”

The Black Knights’ season ended Friday night with a 9-1 loss to powerful No. 1-seed Monticello High in the Jefferson District tournament. But one loss matters little to Charlottesville now. They’ve taken a more critical step this year — saving a program and setting it on a brighter path.

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