Tecumseh grad Alicia Webb thriving in senior season for USI softball
5 min read
EVANSVILLE — No make any difference what she’s doing, you can generally locate Alicia Webb with a smile on her face. It is really no surprise that most of those people smiles seem when she’s on the softball diamond participating in the match that she enjoys.
Whilst that contentment has constantly been there, that optimistic way of thinking has expanded tenfold for the College of Southern Indiana starting left fielder and 2017 Tecumseh grad for the duration of her senior year. She set a ton of aims for herself ahead of this calendar year.
But the most crucial a person? Love it when you can.
“Enjoying hard was 1 of my most important goals — if we were being at the very least going to be capable to enjoy,” Webb claimed. “Arrive out here with a beneficial attitude and normally have the aim of just seeking your best.”
So significantly, that system has labored to fruition. Her senior calendar year has found her put up the best statistical figures of her job for the Screaming Eagles (5-14, 3-9 GLVC). She’s hitting a profession-very best .406 and has previously established a new vocation-significant with eight doubles. She also not too long ago just saw a 22-video game hitting streak end in the next sport of a doubleheader against McKendree — just 5 video games shy of tying the program record.
Whilst there were a handful of minor modifications designed to her physical video game in advance of the season, the greatest shift she’s discovered in her profitable senior campaign can be attributed to beneficial mental gains she has built.
“I’ve actually just attempted to stay out of my very own head,” Webb reported. “When you happen to be in a slump or you make an error, you commence wondering way too substantially. For me, it was all about functioning on myself and my psychological match.”
Webb has turn out to be a person of USI’s leaders with each her general performance and the way she carries herself on the industry. She is just not essentially the loudest man or woman for the duration of video games and tactics but her teammates choose observe of what she does and how she does it.
You can find a certain aura of confidence and positivity that follows her all-around. It is become contagious to those who are all-around her.
“She attempts to preach to the crew that we’re here for a explanation and she usually has a lot of passion for the game,” mentioned USI head mentor Sue Kunkle. “Folks that seriously appreciate the match and are invested in it, they have a tendency to just excel. It doesn’t make any difference what posture she’s in or what job she has for the working day, she always brings her ‘A’ game.”
That self confidence was not constantly there, even so. She can recall entering the application as a freshman with an abundance of nerves.
Of course, that is organic. What has amazed her the most is how she’s grown to grow to be a person of the players her more youthful teammates appear up to in excess of the class of her vocation.
“When you come in, you’re a little nervous and a very little timid,” Webb reported. “As the decades go on, you develop that self esteem from your teammates and your coaches. I want to do nearly anything I can offer for the crew to be thriving.”
She’s generally been inclined to support out in whichever way she can. For case in point, she figured out a complete new placement when she attained the collegiate amount.
Webb had generally played shortstop for the duration of her effective tenure at Tecumseh. When she experienced produced a few stints in the outfield, it was never anything she had totally bought accustomed to. That is, until eventually Kunkle noticed her understand left field in what felt like an instant.
“We place below in the outfield and it took her a number of minutes. There was a little bit of time to get settled in out there but she took off with it,” Kunkle stated. “She was sturdy so her throws ended up great, she was speedy so she fielded the ball properly and she received good jumps in the grass.”
There were being a several adjustments Webb experienced to make. Typically on the pace of the video game from an fully new situation.
“When you happen to be in the infield, it’s so brief that it truly is like ‘Bam, bam, bam!’,” Webb stated. “I wouldn’t say the outfield is always much more calm but you’re not regularly stressing out on no matter whether or not the ball is coming to you.”
Webb states she nevertheless thinks about her substantial university days at Tecumseh typically. Through her tenure with the Braves, they gained 4 straight sectional titles together with back again-to-back regional crowns and a Class 1A state championship in 2017.
She states she misses working with Tecumseh head mentor Gordon Wooden and the camaraderie she had with her childhood pals — a little something that has become a minimal less difficult considering the fact that a previous Brave joined the Screaming Eagles roster this past thirty day period.
“I miss these ladies. I had played with all of them considering that I was a tiny kid,” Webb explained. “Now that we have a person much more addition to the workforce (Tecumseh grad Madison Duncan), it variety of provides back again reminiscences.”
Webb will not miss out on out on many chance to go again to Lynnville and do the job with the high faculty crew each time she has a probability. She operates the program’s youth softball camp that requires place in June — an party she seems to be ahead to each individual yr.
Doing work with youthful gamers has taught her a great deal. It is built her notice why she got concerned with softball in the very first place.
“Seeing youthful girls place a smile on their deal with and wanting to be there and loving the activity, they enjoy you executing things like this,” Webb stated. “I did not take into account how a lot folks look up to you. That’s one issue I took absent — no make a difference what you do, remind oneself that an individual is constantly viewing.”
Call Courier & Push sporting activities reporter Hendrix Magley through e mail at [email protected] or through Twitter @TweetsOfHendrix.
