By Donna Lampkin Stephens

This could be THE year for Conway’s Lady Cat softball team.
With eight seniors, five of whom are four-year starters who led the Lady Cats to the state semifinals when they were freshmen, the stars seem to be aligned.

But seventh-year coach Chad Longing properly downplayed the situation heading into the season.
“Any team that has made a run and eventually gone to the state championship will tell you there’s some luck involved,” said Longing, who has led three of his six previous CHS teams to state semifinal finishes. “We’ve got a lot of the pieces in place, but we’re going to have to get a break, and we have to get lucky in order for that to happen.”
But good teams, as they say, make their own luck, and these Lady Cats are primed for their run.
Some of them will go on to play their sport in college; others will hang up their cleats at season’s end. But until then, they are united.
“I really think this could be it,” said Natalye Chudy, the first baseman who has signed with Lambuth University in Jackson, Tenn. “We all thought last year was, but we weren’t as close as we are this year. Last year a lot of people were jealous of each other, and this year we’re all sticking together as a team.”
Her teammate, pitcher Kayce Moore, who is headed to Hendrix, agreed.
“We’re girls; we have drama, and last year there were a lot of things going on,” she said. “This year we all get along really well, and I think that’s going to help. Whenever you have turmoil within the team, it shows when you play, and since we’re all close this year, I think we’ll be able to do well.”
The five four-year starters are Chudy, Moore, second baseman Kristin Shock, center fielder Bailey Prout and catcher Jenny Beth Davis. Shock and Prout have signed to play for Central Baptist College. Davis has decided to give up her competitive softball to concentrate on being a student at the University of Central Arkansas.
“Those five are a coach’s dream, as a kid, as a student, as an overall person,” Longing said. “Really, for the last four years, it has been easy to come to work knowing that these kids are the way they are and also that they are very talented in the sport they play.”

The other three seniors are outfielder Emily Hoover, third baseman/designated hitter Mandy Eggert and shortstop Nikol Domengeaux, who separated a shoulder and missed much of her junior season. Longing said if she has a good year, she, too, could sign a scholarship offer.
Besides the softball talent, there are high GPAs and ACT scores among the group.
“It’s a stellar class,” Longing said. “They’ve been involved with softball from an early age. Their parents have taken an interest in the sport, and obviously the kids have, too, but at that age you have to give it to the parents because they’re the ones carting them all over the state, paying for hotels and uniforms.
“When these kids were 8-10 years old, their parents instilled a love of the sport, and that’s just carried on.”
CHUDY
Chudy began playing T-ball at 4 and played slow-pitch softball from the time she was 5 through her sixth-grade year.
“They would walk me because all I hit was home runs,” she said.
She moved to Conway from Hazen in sixth grade.
She said her mother, Sandy Mabry, had been her biggest influence.
“She said if I was committed, then my dreams would come true, and they did,” Chudy said. “She made me go to practice when I did not want to and shagged balls for me when it was 20 degrees and when it was 100. She never missed a game; win or lose she always was full of encouragement. She never gave up on me. She was always there building me up, telling me I could do it.”
Lambuth is moving to the Gulf South Conference of NCAA Division II, and Chudy said she liked both the athletic and academic angle of her next home.
“I want to either be a sports trainer or a pharmacist, and Lambuth is a great liberal arts college connected to the University of Tennessee Medical School,” she said.
She said she also strongly considered Hendrix.
“It was very, very hard for me to make a decision about which way to go,” she said.
Chudy hit .400 as a junior with 34 hits, 37 RBIs and a team-leading six home runs.
And although she’s excited that her senior season has arrived, she also is a little sad.
“I don’t want it to end,” she said. “We’ve been playing together for so long, it’s going to be different trying to find other friends like that.”
MOORE
Moore, too, started T-ball at 4. She moved to fast-pitch at 8.
“This is corny, but I was a pitcher for my slow-pitch team and I remember a game where I got in trouble for pitching the ball too fast,” she said. “That’s when we were just learning about fast-pitch, and I said, ‘Dad, if I pitch too fast in slow-pitch, I should play fast-pitch.’”
As a freshman, she anticipated being the Lady Cat varsity pitcher, but a junior, Schylar Dake, moved in from Oklahoma during the year. Dake, now at CBC, got the starting job, and Moore pitched JV and was designated hitter for the varsity.
“I got pushed out, but playing JV made me a better pitcher for when I moved up to varsity,” she said.
One of the highlights of her career came during that freshman season.
“We were playing Cabot at the state tournament, and I’d played against their pitcher since I was little and had a hard time hitting her,” she said. “We were down, and I remember hitting a double off her.”
Moore sports a 4.1 GPA and calls herself “really into chemistry, which is weird.”
She wants to become a nurse anesthetist and said she planned to major in allied health at Hendrix and minor in chemistry.
She, too, is excited about the season.
“We’re an athletic class,” she said, pointing to Conway’s five volleyball seniors and a big senior class in baseball. “Most of us have been on the same team or rival teams since we were little, so we’ve grown up with each other and have all fallen in love with the game.”
SHOCK
Shock and Prout will join former Lady Cat teammates Dake and Tia Houston on the CBC squad.
“I’m real excited because at first I didn’t know if I wanted to play college ball, but softball’s been my life since I was 10, and it’s nice to be able to go back and play with people I’ve played with before, and just an honor to be able to play college ball,” Shock said.
“For all of us to still be playing together is pretty amazing.”
Shock batted .411 last year with 35 hits, 35 RBIs and three home runs.
She said her team goal as a senior was to win the 7A-Central and make the state championship game.
Her highlight?
“I’m a smaller girl, and you don’t see smaller girls hit those home runs, but we were at Bryant last year with two outs and the bases loaded and two strikes, and she threw me a high ball and I hit a grand slam,” she said. “It was amazing.”
She said she’d like to pursue a coaching or teaching career like her grandmother, Lorene Shock.
She knows the significance of this season’s goals.
“Just our whole team being able to play with each other for so long, knowing each other, going as far as we can,” she said. “And if we don’t make it, we’ll all know we did good and will be proud of ourselves.”
PROUT
Prout began playing ball at 4. She played with various competitive fast-pitch teams over the years, and she said CBC suits her perfectly.
“I’m really into the small school thing, and I just feel like CBC’s the right place for me,” she said. “I’ll be playing with my former teammates (Dake and Houston), and Kristin is coming with me.
“I just seem more comfortable there. It already feels like home to me.”
Prout started at shortstop as a freshman before moving to center. Like most of her teammates, she also played other sports, but since her eighth grade year, she’s concentrated on softball.
She said the Lady Cats, led by her class, had grown as a team over the years.
“We’ve become closer, like a family,” she said. “That helps a lot during games and everything. When you work better together, you play better. That should make a difference in us winning some more games.”
She said she was undecided about what to study at CBC, although she leans toward English and history.
“I like history a lot,” she said. “I think it’s real fascinating, and I love to write.”
But before that future unfolds, there’s a senior season to focus on. After breaking a wrist early last season but still managing to hit .347, she is perhaps more eager than the others to hit the field.
“It’s going to be real big,” she said. “I hope we can make it to state; we’ve just got to work our tails off. I’m happy and said at the same time. I’m sad because we’re all so close to the coaches. Coach Longing is like a second dad to me.”
DAVIS
Davis had originally planned to join her teammates at CBC but then decided against it.
“I decided I actually wanted to start my career at UCA, and I feel like I couldn’t really do that and play softball at the same time,” said Davis, who said she plans to pursue pharmacy school after UCA.
Davis batted .436 last year with 38 hits, 40 RBIs and two home runs.
But she said her career highlight thus far came during her freshman year, when she hit her first two home runs within a week.
“And the other is hitting a grand slam in the state tournament this past year,” she said.
Team-wise, she said the best accomplishment was going to the semifinals during her freshman season with so many freshmen starters.
“Basically, all eight of us have been playing ever since we were 8 years old,” she said.
She said Conway’s goal of a state championship was within reach this spring.
“We did lose a lot of talent last year, but I really think we can actually do it this year,” she said. “Knowing that the eight seniors have been playing together a really long time, we can kind of carry our team to state.”
But she admitted to mixed emotions as the season-opener neared.
“We’re stressed because we feel like we still have a lot more practice to do; we’re anxious to play our first game, but I’m sad because it’s going to be my last first game,” she said.
LONGING
Longing was a CHS baseball player, graduating in 1991. He never dreamed he’d wind up coaching softball.
But after earning his bachelor’s degree from UCA, he took at job at Oglethorpe County High School near Athens, Ga., as head baseball coach.
“In Georgia, fast-pitch was played in the fall, and I’d never played football or really been exposed to it, so in order to keep me off the football field in the fall, they offered me an assistant softball job,” he said. “I told the athletic director I’d never coached a girl in my life, but it sounded fun, and the rest is history.”
He said he’d never return to coaching baseball.
“I shouldn’t say never, but baseball to me now is not nearly as intriguing or as interesting,” he said. “This sport is so much quicker. There’s more detail on fundamentals. Keep in mind that this is only my opinion, but you’re 20 feet closer. The velocity is the same but the strength isn’t, so in my opinion, this sport is a lot more difficult to play. It’s evident by the scores when you pick up the paper.”
He said North Little Rock, the defending Class 7A state champion with what he called the best pitcher in the state in Jessica Sheldon, would be the favorite in the 7A-Central.
“Our conference is very, very difficult,” he said. “You’ve got Bryant, Cabot, us and North Little Rock (at the top), and if you don’t show up one day, you’ll get beat.
“You could finish fourth in the conference and win the state championship.”