Houma Christian hoping to return to Sulphur

Before yesterday’s playoff victory against Bethany Christian, the fifth-seeded Houma Christian Lady Warriors had learned a valuable lesson about success in sports. Sometimes winning is not enough.

After going nearly a month without a loss and breezing through District B-8 undefeated for their second consecutive district title, the team got blasted 13-2 by Catholic New Iberia last week.

So they held a meeting before the regular season finale against Terrebonne. The players decided that to make a deep playoff run this season, they needed to bring back the magic from last year.

“We haven’t been playing with the fire we did last year. It seemed like we had lost that fight in us,” said Lady Warrior junior Shira LaGreca. “We talked about having fun again and reminded each other to have fun like we did last year when we made the state semifinals.”

The summit must have worked. Houma Christian avenged an 11-1 loss to Terrebonne on March 3 with a 3-0 win in the regular season finale.

The victory was symbolic of the Lady Warriors’ 2009 campaign.

The team struggled early in the season, losing three out of the first four games. They were inconsistent at the plate and had trouble adjusting defensively to different players covering new positions.

“In the beginning, we were hitting well, but playing poorly on defense. Then we started playing better defensively, but weren’t hitting as well,” said Lady Warrior head coach Christi Crowdus. “Now they’re doing a better job in both areas.”

Some of the players stayed after practice to do extra hitting. Junior pitcher Lauren Crowdus worked to correct her throwing mechanics with assistant coach James Spearman.

The extra effort has paid off. Crowdus has returned to dominant form, starting every game on the mound for Houma Christian.

“I try and control the game more with movement and not so much with speed,” she said. “I want to hit different locations and move the ball around, use different pitches to keep the batters off balance, so they don’t know what’s going to come next.”

Crowdus also worked hard in the past year developing more varieties of pitches – fastball, dropball, screwball and a change-up.

“I always had a change-up, but the last couple of years I really worked on that,” she said. “It works really well against good hitters. They’re not expecting a slow pitch to come.”

The improvement in the team defensively has also helped Lauren stay loose on the mound, according to Christi Crowdus.

“When she knows the rest of her teammates are going to make good plays, she can relax and not have the pressure of feeling like she has to do it on her own,” the coach said. “I think that has helped her be more successful because they’re making the plays we expected them to make all year long.”

At the plate, the Lady Warriors stopped over-swinging the bats, instead sticking to the fundamentals of solid contact with the ball to get on base and generate runs.

While Houma Christian has no seniors on the roster, they are still a very experienced team.

Most of the juniors – LaGreca, catcher Brooke Allemand, centerfielder Natalie Voisin and first baseman Courtney Callie – have been on the team since the eighth grade.

Lauren Crowdus, 17, has been the starting pitcher since the sixth grade. Sister Lindsey, 14, an eighth grader, is at third base.

Both Crowdus girls and Allemand were Class B All-State selections in 2008.

“We have a lot of girls that can fill that leadership role,” Christi Crowdus said. “Different players have stepped up at different times to carry us when we needed it.”

Despite having both of her daughters on the team, Christi Crowdus said she tries not to let the coach-player relationship interfere with their mother-daughter relationship.

“For the most part, what happens on the field stays on the field,” she explained. “If they have trouble on the field, I try not to harp on them when I get home. I try to remember that other players, once they leave the field, that’s it. They’re not being corrected, so I don’t correct them as players when we get home. But there are times when you end up saying things.”

If the Lady Warriors want to return to Sulphur in May, the coach would like to see her squad be more patient at the plate and run the bases more aggressively than they have this season.

“As a team, we talk about what it felt like to lose in the semifinals (to state runner-up Grand Lake 4-0),” she said. “We talk about what it felt like to get to Sulphur and what an accomplishment that was for our players as well as our school. We want to keep that tradition going.”

It is up to the players now to decide how far they go in the playoffs. They appear confident they can do better than the semifinal round.

“Athletically, we’re so much more solid than we were last year,” LaGreca said. “The only thing that is keeping us from advancing is between our ears.”

“If we play like we did against Terrebonne, I’m sure we can make it to the finals,” Lauren Crowdus said.