Junior Hannah Hanson (left) and senior Lizzie Becker are the co-captains for the 2016 GFS softball team. (Photo by Tom Utescher)

by Tom Utescher

Returning to action on the softball field, Germantown Friends School is literally coming off of a banner year.

After several seasons of a steady ascent into the upper echelons of the Friends Schools League, the Tigers won their first FSL championship in 2015, outslugging the George School in a 15-12 tournament final.

GFS finished its season with an overall record of 10-4 after falling to Inter-Ac League co-champion Episcopal Academy in the quarterfinal round of the Pennsylvania Independent Schools Tournament.

The Tigers will have a number of new faces in the varsity dugout this spring. The program graduated eight players off of the 2015 roster, including multi-year varsity stalwarts such as Magda Andrews-Hoke, Julia Mankoff, Liana Spiro. and Sophie Trotto.

Andrews-Hoke was Germantown’s starting catcher last season, but the other half of the battery is back.

Now a senior, Lizzie Becker has been the primary pitcher for the Tigers since her freshman year. She missed the early part of the 2015 season due to tendinitis, but returned to help lead the team to the league title.

Third-year head coach Steph Aurello (Mount St. Joseph ’00) emphasized, “We lost so many players last year that we’re doing a lot of experimenting, and it will take a little while before all of the positions are set.”

During Becker’s injury rehab last spring, Lila Sternberg-Sher filled in on the mound, and she is back as a junior this season. She’ll be facing the pitching circle, instead of being in it, as she learns the catcher’s craft.

“Having some of that perspective from being a pitcher should help her,” Aurello observed.

For the coming campaign, Becker is team co-captain along with junior Hannah Hanson. Hanson will be moving across the diamond from third base to first, where her height and reach will be an advantage. In addition to Becker, the senior class is represented by Olivia Browne and Emily Fichandler.

Hanson and Sternberg-Sher are joined by two other returning juniors, Lilly Dupuis and Emma Lynam.

There is also a new 11th-grader, Mackenzie Corcoran, who transferred from Abington Friends to GFS this year.

The Tigers will be relying on contributions from a sophomore class that includes Sophie Trotto’s sister, Olivia, and Caroline Kavanagh, who has demonstrated her eye-hand coordination as a member of Germantown’s varsity tennis squad in the fall season.

Dupuis has brought in from the outfield to work the left side of the infield, where Kavanagh is also getting a look. Corcoran could also fill an infield role, while the candidates for the outfield include Fichandler, Browne, and Lynam.

As Aurello stressed, things are still in flux.

In addition to Kavanagh and Trotto, the 10th graders who are seeing action in pre-season training are Alex Boyd and Sarah Safford. Safford’s older sister, Hannah, was a squash standout for the Tigers who has just completed her freshman season at Brown.

“Alex and Sarah were pretty much the leaders on the JV team last year,” Aurello related, “and they’re ready for varsity softball.”

At a meeting of the league coaches a few weeks ago, the GFS skipper got the impression that rival teams have also suffered significant graduation losses. However, several of them are returning experienced pitchers, like GFS.

“It looks like there are going to be a number of evenly-matched teams in the top half of the league,” Aurello said. “I think it’s going to be another competitive season.”

The GFS mentor has a new assistant coach in Merisa Rudy. A former player at Little Flower High School, Rudy also helped out with the girls’ soccer team in the fall.

During spring break, the Tigers will take a trip to the Baltimore area. There, they will play some other high school teams, watch some college games, and generally do some team bonding so that the young varsity players and the veterans get to know one another.