By Bob Sutton
Special to The Alamance News
Without enough players to compete, Williams High School has called off the rest of its softball schedule with a couple of weeks remaining in the regular season.
The Bulldogs decided not to continue following last week’s spring break, when they weren’t scheduled to play. The previous week, they played once with other games called off.
“It’s unfortunate,” athletics director Todd Davis said. “We had some injuries and just the toll of the season.”
Williams held a 0-10 overall record and a 0-4 mark in the Central 3-A Conference. Snags with player availability had occurred as a league game earlier this month at Eastern Alamance was called off a few hours before the scheduled first pitch.
There were 15 players listed on the Bulldogs’ online roster on MaxPreps, but several of them were no longer available for games.
Davis said the school cancelled the team’s non-league games earlier in the season in hopes that the Bulldogs could hold together to finish the league slate. Williams didn’t field a junior varsity team.
Senior standout Jainasia Bailey hadn’t been available because of a knee injury suffered late in basketball season.
Eric Bratcher is the team’s coach. Former Western Alamance player Kaitlyn Herbin serves as an assistant coach.
The team’s closest result was an 11-5 non-conference loss February 28 at Chapel Hill. That was during the first week of the season.
Williams played conference foes Eastern Alamance and Western Alamance once each, falling 17-0 to Eastern and 22-0 to Western in home games.
Williams also went winless in 2022 after not fielding a team in the 2021 season that was limited by the pandemic. The Bulldogs softball team hasn’t won more than three games in a season since 2017.
The Williams softball team isn’t alone in nixing the rest of its season. Eastern Guilford ended its winless boys’ lacrosse season last month.
