No days off
CHERRY TWP — It's a Sunday evening and Cortney Claypoole is in her back yard hitting softballs off a tee.
“No days off,” she says.
For Claypoole, a junior on the Moniteau girls softball team, off days breed opportunities for failure.
And Claypoole hates to fail.
Luckily for her — and the Warriors — that hasn't happened often in her career.
Claypoole has been a fixture in the Moniteau lineup since her freshman year. She batted .581 as a freshman and .418 last season as a sophomore.
This year, however, she has elevated her game to a different level.
Claypoole is batting .561 with four home runs and 27 RBI in just 12 games. She also has seven doubles, three triples, an OPS of 1.739 and has swiped 10 bases for the 12-0 Warriors.
“Cortney has been just sensational for us,” said Moniteau softball coach Dan Beebe. “She's having a record-book season. If it wasn't for back-to-back KSAC Player of the Year Kennedy DeMatteis on her own team, she'd be the favorite to win it this year.”
Claypoole has added power to her game this season.
She hit her first career home run over the fence at Moniteau early in the season against Karns City. Claypoole dedicated that homer to her grandfather, Harold Tenney, who died in February.
She has launched three more home runs since.
“The first one was awesome because I finally got it out of the way,” Claypoole said. “The next one — OK, people thought maybe I'm getting lucky — but the third and fourth ones made me proud of myself.”
Claypoole, who is just 5-foot-5, was moved up to the No. 2 spot in the order from the fifth spot where she hit the majority of the time the last two seasons.
With Alazia Greaves having a career-year in the No. 9 spot (.577 average) and speedy Gabby Stewart in the leadoff spot (a gaudy .594 average), Claypoole has had plenty of RBI chances this season.
And she's made good on most of them.
“With Alazia and Gabby, we basically have two leadoff hitters,” Beebe said. “That's allowed Cortney to rake in the RBIs.”Claypoole has been raking in hits for a slew of teams, not just Moniteau.She plays for a travel team located in Buffalo, N.Y., making the three-plus hour drive to practice and events during the high school offseason.She's also played in the Queen of Diamonds Showcase in South Carolina and overseas in France and the Netherlands.While in the Netherlands, her USA team played a top French national team and won 4-0.They played indoors where there was no right field because of the odd configuration. Any ball hit there was ruled a ground-rule double. Claypoole and her teammates peppered balls into that no-man's land.“We kept hitting them into right field,” Claypoole said. “The French team was a bunch of slap hitters and here we come as the U.S. team with big hitters and we're skying balls off the ceiling. We surprised them. After, all these little Dutch girls came running up to us to ask for our autographs.”Claypoole has done all of that to get exposure in the hopes of landing a Division I scholarship.Her parents, Lenny and Becky, supported her every step of the way, sacrificing time and money to get Claypoole where she needed to go to play softball.“I can't even put into words how grateful I am for them,” Claypoole said.But over time, though, her goals have changed.Claypoole plans to pursue a career as a pharmacist, which is a very demanding five-year program.Claypoole isn't sure if softball will be in her college future.“There's so much more to life than softball,” she said. “I wouldn't change a thing. I mean, I went to Paris to play softball. I still have a year of high school ball after this one ahead of me. You can't play softball all your life.”That's not to say she would pass up a chance to play collegiate softball if it was the right fit at the right university.But for now, Claypoole is focusing on the things that are within her control, like mashing the softball at a prodigious rate this season for the Warriors, who are 52-3 so far in her career.The big goal for Moniteau is getting over the state playoff hump.The Warriors have lost in the first round of the PIAA Class AA playoffs the last two years.“Every practice we go 110 percent,” Claypoole said. “We're always pushing ourselves. Always trying to get better.”Even if that means hitting softballs off a tee on a sunny Sunday evening.
