A fun, happy season: Hope Barrett's big day powers Madison past Clear Fork

BELLVILLE — What went from a joke poking fun at a slip of the tongue has turned into a bit of a moniker for Madison senior Hope Barrett.

During a preseason video interview in which she prepared and prepared for, Barrett had a brain lapse and said she hopes to have a "fun, happy season" instead of a "fun, healthy season."

Whatever she was trying to say and whatever words she wanted to use, there is only one way to describe the first five games for the smooth shortstop and that is, "on fire."

Barrett had a huge game on Monday afternoon leading the Rams to a 13-1 run-rule win over Clear Fork to help the Rams improve to 5-0 on the season and coincidentally, 5-0 against fellow Richland County teams. Barrett went 3-for-3 with four RBIs and two runs scored while hitting a double and launching a grand slam in the top of the fifth inning to put the Rams ahead of the 10-run rule threshold sending her team home with a convincing victory in their first game in seven days.

The only blemish on Barrett's day was a first-inning error on defense as she bobbled a ground ball and still almost threw the runner out at first. After that, Barrett vowed to play perfect softball and she did just that, especially with the bases loaded in the fifth inning.

"I knew I had to make it up to my team because they had my back after that error," Barrett said. "So, when I went up with the bases loaded, the last thing on my mind was hitting a home run. All I was wanting to do was put the bat on the ball and put it in play and odds are, something good will happen."

For the season, Barrett is on a terror at the dish. She is hitting .625 and sports a .700 on-base percentage and is slugging 1.125. She is tied for the team lead in hits with 10 and also has two triples and hit her first home run of the season on Monday. She has five RBIs and eight runs scored.

Not bad for a player who struggled at the plate last season hitting .234 with just 15 hits making the Notre Dame College commit question whether she loved the game or not. Five games into her senior year and she nearly has last year's total matched. It is all credited to a new, simplified approach at the plate where she went from trying to come up with the biggest, furthest hit of her life to just making solid contact.

"This year, I just go up with the focus of putting the ball in play because good things can happen, and good things never happen when you don't put it in play," Barrett said. "So, it is a simple approach, but it works because I have a lot of great players around me. It really is that simple of an approach and that is what I will continue to do for the rest of the year."

It is something Madison coach Tim Niswander has been trying to get Barrett to grasp and now that she has, she is playing at an All-Ohio caliber pace.

All because of a simple approach at the plate.

"It really is that simple," Niswander said. "We have been working toward this for two years now and one of the things she struggled with was adjusting with two strikes as she still had that, 'I want to hit it a mile' swing. I preached not just to her, but to all of them that a lot of the things we don't hit well are because we are trying to do too much and aren't hitting it on the barrel. If we just hit it on the barrel and let the bat work for us, when anyone does that, we are going to have success. We have been emphasizing that and it is working really well right now, especially with Hope."

Barrett has been hitting so well that she was moved from the No. 7 spot in the lineup up to No. 2 after an injury left a hole in the order after the first game of the season. Barrett has rewarded her coach with the move by playing up to the potential he knew she was capable of for the last four years.

The Rams are a different team when Barrett is leading the charge with her play.

"It is huge," Niswander said. "We moved Hope up to the No. 2 hole because Campbell (Kiser) got hurt early in the season and she has been hitting and hitting and hitting. I pulled them both aside before the game and told Campbell, who returned for the first time since her injury today, that I was going to leave Hope up there because she has been hitting the ball well and Campbell was fine with it. Our kids are completely selfless and very much about us. When you get to that point, anything you ask them to do based on the success we have had with it, they are going to understand why we are asking them to do these things. They are all in."

The Colts saw just one bad defensive inning in the fourth as the Rams scored five runs as a pair of runners reached on difficult plays and runners scored on wild pitches.

"We got down a few runs and got a little tight and then the mistakes started to pile up," Clear Fork coach Chris Clapper said. "They are a very good hitting team and gave us some outs that we couldn't take and we kind of crumbled from there."

The Colts got away from the things that made them successful during their five-game winning streak heading into Monday's matchup. After starting the year 0-3, the Colts rallied off five straight wins including enough to win the D Division of the MVD Tournament in Ashland.

"We starting hitting the ball a lot better and making those non-routine plays turn out in our favor," Clapper said. "We minimized the mistakes and all of those things didn't happen today and it bit us in the butt."

The Colts will look to move on quickly as they have a two-game series with Ontario looming. Renee Anders, Pacey Chrastina, Alyssa Swainhart, Ava Carr and Merista Brown all had one hit for the Colts. Brown had the lone RBI.

"As long as we can maintain confidence, we will be alright," Clapper said. "Every game does mean something to us because we want to win, but we will work on getting past this one and putting it behind us while still learning from it."

Barrett, Kendyll Kershner and Emma Stankovich led the Rams with three hits apiece while Kyleigh Reiter and Ashley Markley had two hits apiece and Olivia Schulz had one. Stankovich and Kershner had a pair of RBIs apiece while Reiter had one.

Layla Azmoun earned the win in the circle with a stellar performance allowing one run on five hits with two strikeouts.

The Rams improved to 5-0 against Richland County teams and can go to 7-0 with a pair of Ohio Cardinal Conference wins over Mansfield Senior this week. Ruling the County is always something the Rams hope to do and they are one step closer to doing just that.

"These are people we see every day," Niswander said. "I had a nephew who just graduated from here and a buddy from high school had a daughter play at Clear Fork and he showed up even though she is graduated. Any time you are playing the area schools, it is a big deal. You want to win every game, but it is extra special to get a win over your neighbors. We don't have a mall anymore to go hang out at, but we can go somewhere and wear our Madison t-shirts and sweatshirts with a lot of Ram pride."

Barrett was just happy to win the next game on the schedule.

"We were really happy to play here and play Clear Fork," Barrett said. "We are always happy to play ball, but it is exciting to play a county rival. You always expect a tough game from a program like Clear Fork but to win 13-1 is a nice way to end the day."

Of course, scoring 13 runs on 14 hits and recording nine RBIs as a team sure has something to do with the nice feeling at the end of the day.

Fun, happy season. Fun, healthy season. Whatever it is, the Rams are rolling and enjoying a great start to their 2023 softball campaign.

jfurr@gannett.com

740-244-9934

Twitter: @JakeFurr11

This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Madison Rams beat Clear Fork Colts in softball behind Hope Barrett's grand slam