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Sometimes in sports being healthy is more important than being good. Just ask Matt Loes, the Olympia High School fastpitch coach.

With four of his starters missing games because of a sickness or injury, the Bears were winless after their first five games. But Loes, who a year ago led a senior laden Bears team to the state playoffs, isn’t panicking, at least not yet.

edge fitness logo“We’re the best 0-5 team around,” Loes said before a recent practice. “We’re going to get on track. We’re going to get it going. We’re a young team.”

A year ago, the Bears had nine seniors on the varsity and six started on that state playoff team. Now, Olympia has just three seniors, only two are starters. And one of them, Sophie Kabel, is a surprise appearance. After starting as a freshman at third base, Kabel didn’t play softball the last two years so she could concentrate on soccer. To Loe’s delight, she’s back.

olympia fastpitch
Erin Roloff, a senior and a starter since her freshman year, has accepted a college scholarship.

“This is my senior year and I missed softball a lot,” Kabel said. “And I wanted to play.”

This year Kabel skipped soccer for the school team and just played club soccer. Even with the two-year absence from softball, Kabel is already back in the “swing” of the game.

“It was hard at first,” Kabel said. “But I picked it right up. It’s like riding a bicycle.”

It’s not like Kabel is sitting and watching when her team plays defense. She starts at third base, the hot corner.

“I like fielding and being in the hot seat,” Kabel said. “I was a little shaky at first, but I’m getting the hang of it.”

olympia fastpitch
Glynne Saelid is a junior and a three-year starter for the Bears.

This is Kabel’s farewell call to sports. The 3.5 student will attend the University of Hofstra in New York and plans to major in communications.

The other two seniors on the Bears’ roster are Erin Roloff and Anisa Hsieh, a backup utility player. Roloff has started in the outfield since her freshman year and earned all-league honors every year. While this is Roloff’s final season in high school, she’ll play again next year, living her dream as she plays outfield at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo University.

“It was my dream school,” Roloff said.

But she didn’t just dream about going there. She did something about it. In addition to working hard on the softball field, earning all-league honors, she’s the one who contacted the college, telling them she’d love to go there. And it wasn’t a one-time greeting.

olympia softball
Sophie Kabel is back playing third base for the Bears.

“I emailed them at least once a week,” Roloff said. “I called them every day for like three weeks.”

Then last June coaches there saw her play in a tournament in California on her club team.

“The weekend after that I went to their camp and that’s when they offered me a scholarship,” Roloff said who eagerly accepted.

Before Roloff got that offer, she made a difficult adjustment. She switched from batting right handed to batting left handed her sophomore year. It was a way of taking advantage of her speed. She can run to first base from home plate in 2.6 seconds.

“It was a roller coaster – mentally and emotionally,” Roloff said about the adjustment. “But it was definitely worth it because if I hadn’t switched over, I wouldn’t be going to Cal Poly.”

olympia fastpitch
Coach Matt Loes talks with his team during a recent practice.

She’s adjusted. Last year, she batted .479, earning her first-team all-league for the second straight year. She was second-team all-league as a freshman. With a 3.7 grade-point-average, Roloff has kept a balance between academics and athletics. She’s a true definition of student-athlete. But with studies and softball, there’s little room for anything else.

“Softball is my life,” Roloff said with a chuckle. “I’m not in any clubs at school.”

Glynne Saelid, a junior and a team captain, isn’t the tallest player on the Bears lineup. At 5-foot-2, she’s one of the smallest. But she’s got one of the biggest hearts on the team. In a game dominated by size, Saelid has proven herself at second base, where she’s started since her freshman year and has earned second-team all-league every season.

“I get comments on how short I am,” Saelid said with a chuckle. “But I think I’ve turned it into an advantage. It’s like an extra challenge. I like it. It makes it more surprising when I can do stuff.”

olympia fastpitch
Coach Matt Loes pitches to his team during a recent practice.

Like her coach, Saelid isn’t panicking about her team’s 0-5 start. She’s confident better times are ahead.

“Things just haven’t clicked yet,” she said. “Once everything falls into place, it’s going to be great. We’re a new team. Everything is new. We’re just getting comfortable with everything.”

In a 5-3 loss to South Kitsap, Olympia left 14 runners on base. Twice the Bears had the bases loaded and didn’t score. On the day after the loss, Loes had his team practice on bunting.

“We just haven’t clicked,” Loes said. “We have a pretty potent lineup. We’ve got some hitters and we’ve got some speed. We have a solid team. We’re just kind of young.”

Olympia has scored 29 runs and given up 50. So scoring runs hasn’t been the biggest problem. But Loes is confident his team will turn it around.

“We’ll get it figured out,” Loes said.

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