SOFTBALL: Wayzata

The Wayzata softball team, coached by Amber Hegland, capped off its 2008 regular season with a second-place finish in the gauntlet that is the Classic Lake Conference. While back-to-back losses to circuit champion Hopkins in the final three days of the season took some of the luster off a tremendous April and May, it cannot completely detract from the squad's accomplishments. After a 14-9 campaign in 2007, the Trojans opened this season with a split — defeating Robbinsdale Armstrong and losing to Edina — before embarking on an 11-game winning streak that saw them outscore the opposition 85-16. Credit for the successful season is evenly distributed on both sides of the ball. Offensively, the Trojans hit for a .349 batting average, while tallying 370 putouts to just 23 errors on defense. Pitchers Anna Twinem, a junior, and Emma Alwin, a senior, combined to start 16 games with Alwin going 7-1 with a 1.417 earned run average and 38 strikeouts as Twinem posted numbers of 5-3, 1.105, 52. Freshman Anna Gustafson was the Trojans' leading hitter during the 2008 campaign, collecting a .478 batting average with one homerun, 11 runs batted in and 13 scored. She was one of three Wayzata hitters, along with senior Alyssa Coleman and junior Allie Siu, that hit over .400 this spring. Siu led the team with 11 stolen bases in 12 attempts, while sophomore Kelsey Durocher's two home runs was tops on the club. In all, seven Trojans hit a homer in the regular season: Kelsey Durocher, Anna Gustafson, Theresa Tauer, Jessica Laurinaitis, Bri Adams, Nina Ferguson and Sarah Laudner. In the regular season at-large, the Trojans accumulated 120 runs, while giving up just 44 in compiling a 15-4 mark.