Then junior and now-senior Meredith Rudich saw it through her own eyes. A once dominant program in the mid-90’s, with five sectional titles in seven years, now fallen to one of the bottom dwellers of the MIC. Backed by poor practice attendance and leadership issues, the Lawrence North Softball program slumped it’s way to a five win season and took a loss to rival Lawrence Central to extend its streak of 18 years without a sectional crown. That’s what comprised the junior season Rudich. It wasn’t pretty.

“The coach didn’t seem to be invested in our success and a lot of the girls were apathetic about things because they didn’t care about things and the overall mood was just bad,” Rudich said. “No one really cared about others.”

The events that unfolded in the previous season sparked the hiring of Matt Marino as head coach over the summer in attempt to revive a struggling program, a challenge Marino takes head on.

“For me, it’s a good challenge. I’ve been coaching softball for 20 plus years,” Marino said. “My daughters played here too and they struggled with that aspect of winning.”

Softball’s core starts with pitching, something Marino sees as the building blocks for the foundation of the program.

“For softball it all starts with pitching,” Marino said. “We’ve got to get some of the younger girls to go to pitching schools and be out there working because if you don’t have pitching, you’re going to be behind the eight ball.”

Lucky for Marino, the first year head coach takes the reigns of the team that returns a veteran in the circle, as junior Leah Richards returns for her second year at the top of the rotation.

“I hope that I can help strike more people out and be a vital part of the team,” Richards said. “I want to be a positive role model because I know some of the upcoming freshmen are going to look at me in my role.”

The turnover has been brief, but Rudich can already begin to see the roots of change within the program.

“{Changes I’ve seen in the program are that] our current coach has always been adamant about attendance, but our previous coach wasn’t that strict and there weren’t really any consequences,” Rudich said. “So, practice has become much more important and policies are more enforced, especially for those who want to be captains.”

While Marino is always looking towards the future, the senior class and this year’s group of captains are something he views as vital to success this year.

We have three seniors and named them all captains,” Marino said.  “We need them to buy into what we’re doing because the three freshmen that will start varsity are out here working really hard and they can see what it takes to be there and compete at that level.”

As one of only three seniors, Rudich knows that a learning curve will be in store, but views it as a positive for the coming years.

“There’s only three seniors, three juniors and some very talented freshmen and sophomores,” Rudich said. “Hopefully they can compound upon the success this season and use that for the coming years when they’re older and leading others.”

While it will certainly be a challenging rebuild, Marino knows the end goal of success will drive this program to new heights and cumulate in a competitive program.

“Our program, hopefully, will continue to get better and grow to a level where girls want to come to LN to play softball; that’s the goal.”