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player ready...One swing announced the arrival of Crown Point freshman Ashlyn Kita.
In the second game of the season, Kita went to the plate as a pinch hitter for her first career at-bat. The Bulldogs trailed Andrean 2-1 in the top of the seventh inning.
“I didn’t want to let anything get to me,” she said. “You can’t overthink it. If the pitch was there, I was swinging at it.”
The pitch was there — or “piped,” as she put it — and Kita connected for a game-tying home run. She has hit three more homers since that March 30 game, leading Crown Point in that category while cementing her spot in the heart of the lineup during her first high school season.
If Kita’s blast confirmed she belonged on the varsity roster, her numbers since then have reinforced that conclusion. She entered Friday hitting .432 with 18 RBIs, the second-most on the team, and was tied for second with four doubles.
Kita didn’t have too many words to describe what the first few months of her high school softball career have been like, but the wide smile that spread across her face said enough.
“It’s been really fun,” she said.
Kita isn’t the only freshman standing out for Crown Point (12-6, 8-2), which is in second place in the Duneland Athletic Conference.
Scarlette Tegtman, batting second in the lineup, is hitting .409 and is third on the team with 11 RBIs. Pitcher Paige Liezert is sidelined with an injury but posted a 1.56 ERA in nine innings. Nevaeh Rangel has pitched five innings without allowing an earned run and was described by Crown Point coach Angie Richwalski as the ace of the junior varsity team.
Kita, Tegtman and Rangel all knew each other well before high school while playing on the same travel team — the Beverly Bandits — but Liezert joined them to make an inseparable quartet, Richwalski said.
“Every time I see them, they’re all together,” Richwalski said. “It’s been amazing to watch all of these freshmen play this well and with this much confidence.”
For Kita, though, her immediate success has come with little surprise. Her older sister, Brinkley, was a four-year varsity player for Crown Point before graduating in 2022 and has a 2.74 ERA in 74 innings for Lipscomb, a Division I program in Nashville.
Brinkley Kita was also a dynamic hitter in high school, and Richwalski said she has found herself doing double takes while watching Ashlyn Kita.
“It’s very hard not to call her Brinkley,” Richwalski said with a laugh. “Their swings look very similar.”
Ashlyn Kita said it was her older sister’s influence that first got her on the field.
“I started playing because of her,” Ashlyn Kita said. “I wanted to be like my sister.”
Their shared love of softball made up for their four-year age gap, providing each with a teammate for every practice session.
“It’s definitely something that always brought us together,” Brinkley Kita said. “We could always go hit in the cages together, so we didn’t have to do it by ourselves.”
As varsity tryouts approached, Ashlyn Kita turned to her older sister to ease some of the anxiety that was building in her mind.
“I was really nervous,” she said. “I just wanted to do good, but I didn’t know if I was going to make the team.”
Brinkley Kita said their conversations come with a level of understanding that can exist only between siblings.
“We can relate to each other to help us stay focused in a way that a coach may not be able to do,” Brinkley Kita said. “When she was trying out for the team this year, I was calming her down, so she wasn’t as worried.”
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Brinkley Kita said she’s getting messages from her former high school teammates about how well her younger sister is playing this season.
“We haven’t been able to talk a bunch because we’re both super busy,” she said. “But it’s all good things. She’s very deserving of this. I’m so happy for her that she’s on varsity. She’s proving to everyone that she should be there.”
Dave Melton is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.