Clarke sophomore shortstop Vanessa Bakley said it best after her team’s 9-2 win over Saydel on July 13 gave the Lady Indians their third straight trip to the State Softball Tournament in Fort Dodge.
“Now it’s just like it’s Clarke softball, it’s something we do,” she said. “We’re there all the time.”
Even though few outside of Clarke County believed the Lady Indians could make it back to state this year, that’s what the expectation has become of head coach Lindsay Diehl’s Clarke softball team.
But it wasn’t always that way.
Diehl took over the softball program in 2010 after the Lady Indians had won just six games the previous year.
“To step back in time and to think about when I first came here, and I stepped into the shed and there were buckets of white balls and I was loaded with eighth-graders and freshmen,” Diehl said. “To get to where it is now, I just think there have been some awesome players who have come through this program in the last five or six years.
“Sometimes I wonder, as much time and effort as I put into it, but it’s totally worth it, because the reward is watching them dogpile to get back to Fort Dodge. There’s nothing that compares to it.”
It didn’t take long for Diehl to start turning the ship around.
She guided the team to 16 victories in her first year at the helm and then increased the victory total to 18 wins in her second season.
By the time her third season as head coach came to a close, the Lady Indians had won 28 games and lost only six, falling in the regional finals to Mid-Prairie.
“Every year kind of built off the next,” she said. “I felt like I was coaching at a college. Having had that experience at Iowa Central, I watched their confidence grow and their skill level grow.”
Fans of Clarke softball know the rest of the story. The following year, the Lady Indians upset West Burlington Notre Dame in the regional finals, advancing to the school’s first state tournament since 1995, when the Lady Indians won the state championship.
Clarke went on to finish runner-up in Class 3A that year, losing to Bondurant-Farrar in the title game.
Then, in 2014, the Lady Indians fought their way back to the state title game, and this time, beat Bondurant-Farrar on a Carley Robins walkoff home run in the bottom of the seventh inning.
After losing five senior starters from the state championship team, the Lady Indians endured a rebuilding year this year, but peaked at the right time to make it back to the state tournament with a 20-17 record.
Relationships
There are a few reasons Diehl has built the program into the perennial state contender that it is, but one of the biggest reasons is the relationships she builds with her players.
“I think relationships are huge, getting to know kids,” she said. “I tell kids I love them and I sincerely mean it. I don’t have any children of my own, but I really feel that during the season, and even in the offseason, that I am the mother of a lot of kids. I expect a lot of them and they know that. They let me be really hard on them, but I love on them just as easily. I think that is a difference maker for a good program, is the relationships you build with kids.”
Those relationships were on full display after Clarke’s 9-2 win over Saydel in the regional final on July 13.
Player after player hugged Diehl and thanked her. While sharing a hug with an emotion Bakley, the Clarke shortstop said to her coach, “I love you.”
Diehl is able to pull the absolute maximum effort out of her players because they’re willing to do anything for her.
“When you set the expectation, it’s amazing to watch kids rise to it and believe in what they’re doing,” Diehl said.
That expectation is being set in girls at a young age in Osceola, paving the way for continued success in the softball program.
“Being the elementary P.E. teacher, I get to start recruiting them when they’re 5 years old,” Diehl said. “I got a banner made last year when we went to state and it said ‘Run to the Roar’ and it had our picture from the regional final. So now when my P.E. girls are warming up, they’ll point to it and say ‘We’re going to Fort Dodge, coach Diehl.’ And they believe it. That’s what the expectation is.”
And that’s how Diehl has built Clarke softball into a dynasty.