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Chasing No. 4: West Greene eyeing more history despite changes

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West Greene’s Jade Renner hugs Kaitlyn Rizor as they celebrate their win over Williams Valley in the Championship PIAA Class A game at Penn State last June.

The Pioneers open the WPIAL Class A playoffs today with a quarterfinal game against Bishop Canevin.

Celeste Van Kirk/Observer-Reporter

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Observer-Reporter

West Greene’s Jade Renner celebrates at second base after hitting a game-tying double in the bottom of the seventh inning against Monessen in the 2018 WPIAL Class A Championship game.

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Celeste Van Kirk/Observer-Reporter

West Greene’s McKenna Lampe and her teammates are trying to become only the fifth team in WPIAL history to win four consecutive district championships.

Bill Simms jokes about a sign he hung up that read, ‘Statistics are like bikinis. They show a lot, but not everything.'”

But one can decipher a lot from only looking at the statistics of the West Greene High School softball team, including that even with some turnover, the Pioneers are right where they have been for the past several years.

West Greene is the hunted as it tries to become only the fifth team in WPIAL softball history to win four consecutive district championships. The four other teams to win four straight titles were Swissvale (1979-1982), Baldwin (1993-1996), Sto-Rox, which won five straight from 2000 to 2004, and Hempfield (2015-2018).

“I am always cautiously optimistic,” said Simms, who in his 14th year as the Pioneers coach. “It’s nice to be the hunted. Everybody is gunning for us and would like nothing better than to knock us off.”

Knocking the Pioneers off has been something teams have tried and failed to do in the last two postseasons.

But how much is this West Greene team – with losses of Madison Renner and others who forced Simms to juggle the lineup – different than those from championships past?

It turns out, outside of home runs, not so much.

Set to open the playoffs with a Class A quarterfinal game today against eighth-seeded Bishop Canevin at Trinity Middle School (6 p.m.), the Pioneers are almost a mirror image of what they were entering the postseason last year. West Greene has the same overall record (16-4), number of doubles (39) and triples (12) as it did a season ago. It had seven more home runs at this time last year but has scored one more run through 20 games this season.

“We have been very fortunate to run through our section,” Simms said.

The Pioneers have outscored their section opponents 144-2 this season. The only two runs they surrendered came after starters were pulled in a game against California.

“We’ve been playing three or five innings games and aren’t getting as many at bats,” he continued. “I’m very proud of the lineup we are putting out there from five through nine (hitters). It’s as solid as we’ve ever had.”

First-year starters Brianna Amos, Jersey Wise, Mackenize Carpenter, Kylie Meek and Kylie Simms have rounded out the bottom half of the Pioneers’ lineup, which has still produced plenty of runs despite not hitting the 20 regular-season home runs they did in 2016 and 25 in 2017.

“The home runs might be skewed from the loss of Renner. That was a huge loss,” Simms said.

West Greene’s team batting average is .415 and it has scored 211 runs, numbers that have dropped by a minimal amount for the last three years.

“It is out there. The kids know what they are shooting for,” Simms said. “You also have seven other teams left wanting the same thing we want. (To win four straight) would be an unbelievable achievement.”

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