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Published: 6/16/2012 | Updated: 5/18/2013
By BLAKE TOPPMEYER
Herald-Whig Sports Writer
PAYSON, Ill. -- Karl Asbury noticed a trend. For whatever reason, the Payson Seymour softball team didn't play well on Saturdays during the regular season, with three of its six regular-season losses coming on Saturdays. In particular, the Lady Indians struggled in their first game on Saturdays when they played multiple games. Knowing Payson would need to win a pair of Saturday games during the postseason to claim its first sectional title in school history, Asbury figured he'd make sure the postseason game wouldn't be the first the Lady Indians played each Saturday. Instead, they'd play an intrasquad wiffle ball game with Asbury serving as full-time pitcher before hopping on the bus to play their postseason game. "We thought that helped us a lot, and we just kind of stuck with it," second baseman Skylar Brown said. "It was kind of like a fun thing for us to do and look forward to before games." The gimmick worked. Payson beat Liberty 10-0 to win the Class 1A Mount Sterling Regional title on a Saturday after it began the day with a wiffle ball game at Payson. The following Saturday, the Lady Indians played wiffle ball in the grassy area near their hotel in Galesburg before traveling to beat host Abingdon to win the sectional championship. "It got to the point where they'd say, â We're going to play wiffle ball right?'" said Asbury, in his first season as Payson's head coach. "Just little things like that, it was huge. You just never think that would be such a big thing, but the kids enjoyed it. It helped us out." The joy ride ended on the final Saturday of the season, when Payson fell 6-0 to Goreville in the state championship. But the Lady Indians were left with a 32-7 record, setting a program record for victories, and the runner-up finish marked the highest Payson has finished in any sport in school history. The Lady Indians accomplished it with a coach who had never before coached softball, a coach who has been selected as The Hearld-Whig's Coach of the Year. Adjustment period This isn't the story of how a new coach swooped in, immediately won over his players and rallied them to state. Instead, it's a tale of struggle and persistence. Asbury has 15 years of baseball coaching experience as a head coach or assistant coach, and he is preparing for his seventh season coaching Unity's football team. Yet this spring was his first season coaching a girls sport, and he admits that posed some unique challenges. Asbury was also dealing with the news that his teaching position had been cut at Payson. He will not be back at the school next fall. Just a couple games into the season, Asbury was beginning to wonder what he got himself into. The Lady Indians had just lost 3-2 to Liberty in extra innings in their West Central Conference South Division opener. Frustration with Asbury was mounting with some of the team's upperclassmen, who were adjusting to their third head coach in a span of three years. Asbury admits it was a trying time for him, and he leaned on his faith -- he says Phillipians 4:13, "I can do all this through Him, who gives me strength," remained at the forefront of his mind -- and his wife, Kathy, for support. Shortly after the Liberty loss, Asbury called a players-only meeting so everyone could air their grievances. "They weren't very comfortable with me to start with," Asbury said. "They'd had me in class and things like that, but being a first-year girls coach, I don't know if I had everybody's best interest at the start. The underclassmen were sold from the very beginning ... but after a while, we had everybody going. After that meeting, it was kind of put up or shut up, and I think that kind of helped get everything lined out, and we weren't going to bicker at each other any more. "After that players meeting, we didn't have any problems after that at all. When the trust finally came through, that's when we took off." Payson didn't lose another WCC South game, finishing 13-1 in the league and winning the conference crown outright. Switching it up Asbury inherited a team that went 24-9 in 2011 and returned every player except first-team all-area shortstop Dakota Flesner. In many ways, his team was set. Yet that didn't keep Asbury from making wholesale changes to the lineup. After opening the season with Kristen Loos batting cleanup, where she excelled in 2011, Asbury moved her to the leadoff spot for a game in which Kelsie Huber, who had been batting leadoff, had to sit out. Asbury liked the new look and decided to stick with it. Loos had been struggling in the No. 4 hole, but she elevated her game in the No. 1 spot. She became a third-team all-state selection after batting .375 with six home runs. Three of her home runs came during the postseason, including a leadoff home run that set the tone for Payson's 4-0 win over Abingdon in the sectional championship. Asbury also moved the slap-hitting Brown from the bottom of the order -- where she hit in 2011 and early in 2012 -- to the No. 2 hole. It created a scenario where Loos could get on base, advance to second when Brown put the ball in play and be in scoring position for No. 3 hitter Cheyanne Bowman, the team's leader in batting average and RBI. "I had to come up with a new leadoff hitter, and Kristen had said something about how she didn't really like hitting fourth because she felt there was too much pressure on her," Asbury said. "So I thought she'd be a good leadoff hitter and we'd get some people on, so that way Cheyanne could hit some people in." With Bowman, a first-team all-stater, in the pitcher's circle, Payson often didn't need to score many runs to win. Asbury's lineup usually generated just enough offense to win, as Payson averaged 6.2 runs per game. "I think by the end of the season that (the lineup) was a really smart idea," Brown said. "We questioned it at first, but then it just started working for us a lot, especially in the postseason games." What's next? It's not as if Asbury turned around a long-suffering program. The 2011 team, coached by Mary Wiedman, was two runs away from a sectional title. Jeff Zanger, who preceded Wiedman, never had a losing season in 12 years as head coach. Each time, however, the Lady Indians fell short of a sectional championship. Now that they have one, they might again be looking for another new coach. Asbury has been hired as a teacher at Unity. To remain Payson's softball coach, Asbury said he'll need approval from both Unity and Payson. He's not sure if that will occur, but he knows what he wants. "I would like to coach again here," Asbury said. Brown said the players returning next season also want Asbury back -- back in the dugout and back on the mound for Saturday wiffle ball games. -- btoppmeyer@whig.com/ 221-3367
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