Topping the league

ROYAL CITY — There’s a new team on top of the WIAA’s Rating Percentage Index list for 1A fastpitch softball – the Royal Knights.

“The girls have been working really hard, so we were excited to see that No. 1 come through,” Royal Head Coach Lisa Lawrence said. “But, we’re also not going to rest on our laurels. We’re going to put our head down and keep working to battle through the rest of the season. We’re about halfway through with our schedule, so we've got a ways to go to keep working and keep fine-tuning our game.”

The WIAA’s RPI list is a formula that combines winning percentage (40%), opponent’s winning percentage (40%) and the winning percentage of a team’s opponents’ opponents (20%). The Knights are in the midst of a four-game win streak, and its lone loss of the season came in a non-league contest against 4A Eastmont (7-4 on March 30.)

Royal moved to 10-1 this season after sweeping Zillah in a doubleheader, winning both matchups 15-0. Along with beginning league play with a 6-0 record, Lawrence said there was an emphasis in the off-season on scheduling a challenging non-league slate to prepare the team for a postseason run. The Knights have already faced Mount Baker (1A, 7-3 this season), Eastmont (4A, 6-3), Deer Park (1A, 6-2) and Riverside (1A, 5-1), and will play Warden (2B, 7-0) and Moses Lake (4A, 8-2) later this season.

“It’s been so important to see better competition, we’ve worked hard to build the schedule this year,” Lawrence said.

Part of the reason for the early season has been the team’s continuity with one another. Royal only lost one senior from last year’s roster, a team that went 15-6 and qualified for the 1A state tournament.

“We only lost one senior last year, so about everybody returned and we have a couple of freshmen who’ve been contributing which has been great,” Lawrence said. “We have a really cohesive team, a lot of the girls play other sports together as well. It’s been great to come into the season already meshing and having a little continuity coming through from last season.”

Since the loss to Eastmont, the Knight bats have been on fire. In their previous four games, Royal has recorded 42 hits and scored 55 runs.

“The girls have been hitting really well, especially in our games against Riverside and Deer Park,” Lawrence said. “All the way through the lineup, we’ve been hitting really well and executing and having some great base that’s really propelling us forward.”

The next challenge for Royal will be to keep its momentum in the coming weeks. An April 22 doubleheader against Naches Valley was canceled, so the Knights will have an 18-day gap in between games until a doubleheader against Wahluke on April 29.

“(In) April, we’re kind of wide open,” Lawrence said. “We’ve got a lot of practices and not a lot of games, but that’s going to give us a good opportunity to continue to fine-tune our game and really work on areas that we need to develop and improve a little bit more.”

The RPI list is full of softball teams from around the Basin checking inside the top 15 of their respective classifications: ACH is No. 4 in 1B; Warden is No. 2 in 2B; Quincy is No. 4 in 1A; In 2A, Ephrata is No. 7 and Othello is No. 11; Moses Lake is No. 9 in 4A.

Ian Bivona may be reached at ibivona@columbiabasinherald.com.

CORRECTION - The caption for the lead photo of this story has been corrected to accurately note Randi Allred's grade.