---

With the buzz of the overflowing crowd temporarily hushed as the Owatonna High School Concert Choir crammed around a microphone near home plate and hummed the first few notes of Star-Spangled Banner, Izzy Radel stood at attention, her hand resting over her heart, her thoughts dwelling in the moment.

The Huskies were about to play their first game at the brand-new Federated Softball Field and Radel — along with the line of blue-clad Husky teammates stretching down the third base line just outside the home dugout — was making a conscious effort to pause and allow the pageantry of the moment to wash over her.

“That was such a cool moment,” Radel said of the pre-game color guard presentation and singing of the National Anthem. “That’s when I tried to soak everything in the most.”

Owatonna head coach, Jeremy Moran, had a lot on his mind in the final buildup to the first pitch. Though he admitted the team’s preseason practices and growing familiarity with the new diamond helped settle his nerves, the OHS skipper wasn’t afraid acknowledge to the unique spectacle of the occasion.

“It’s a different atmosphere,” he said. “It’s different with the music. It’s different with the crowd. I think they were all feeling it and fed off that energy. It was a good vibe and they were stoked to play tonight. We were excited to open it up and introduce this new atmosphere. It was a good start.”

Ultimately, Owatonna christened its sparkling new on-campus stadium with a 7-5 victory over Rochester Mayo, but more importantly, took another step forward in its ongoing quest to secure the program’s first Big Nine Conference title in 32 years. In a league stacked with four different teams that have claimed at least one state championship in the last nine years alone, climbing to the top of the conference heap won’t be easy, but the Huskies have already made progress in that regard.

The results speak for themselves.

OHS has increased its win total from the previous season each year under Moran and earned the No. 2 seed in the ultra-competitive Section 1-AAAA bracket last fall when the Huskies posted their best overall record in more than two decades at 15-7 (.681).

Though many of the parents of the current players were in elementary school the last time OHS claimed the school’s lone Big Nine Conference softball title in 1992 — sharing the crown with Rochester John Marshall — Moran understands the significance of connecting each generation of players within the program and binding them together into a singular unit.

One of the ways he plans on accomplishing this is by highlighting a different small group of youth players during the team’s regular pregame festivities this season. On Thursday, a pair of youngsters were introduced prior to the game, took the field with the starters and given the opportunity to announce the line-up over the PA system during the second inning.

For current players like Radel — who is a key part of the talented senior core that was in eighth grade when Moran took over prior to the 2019 season — its moments like these that provide a valuable perspective for the senior second baseman.

“It’s cool to be in the role model,” she said. “I can remember being that little and having that same feeling of looking up to the older players. It’s great because it gets them excited for softball, and that’s really good for the program as a whole.”

Added assistant coach Kevin Rainey: “(On Wednesday) coach Moran talked about what we were going to do prior to the game and how we were going to include the youth players and I’m telling you, our players were so excited for that opportunity.”

Assistant coach Rachel Malo is also an invaluable asset when it comes to cultivating the program’s burgeoning culture. After a successful career with the Huskies, Malo graduated in 2013 and went on to play in college for four seasons at Gustavus Adolphus. Of the right individuals on the high school staff (9th grade-varsity), she’s the only one to have played for Owatonna.

“We are lucky to have her,” Rainey said.

A NEW FIELD, A NEW SURFACE, A NEW SEASON

Thursday’s season-opener officially got underway at 7:24 p.m. local time when Kennedy Hodgeman spun a strike into the mitt of catcher Taya Selbrade.

Over the next six-and-a-half innings, fans were treated to an exciting, albeit occasionally choppy, showdown between a pair of Big Nine Conference foes at the newly-minted Federated Softball Field. Wedged between the main educational building and the sprawling practice fields on the far south end of the campus, the symmetrical 205-foot diamond features a giant Husky logo painted into the centerfield turf, a sharp blue scoreboard above the left field fence, a cozy grandstand, a new press box and two cavernous dugouts attached to a pair of giant storage sheds on both sides of the stadium.

Known in the industry as Speed Turf, the synthetic turf represents the latest in competitive artificial surface technology and is meant to provide a “short, soft grass playing appearance.” During preseason practices, Moran said he quickly discovered that the ball travels much faster on the new surface and spent more time hitting ground balls to his outfielders than he did skying pop flies.

“It’s so much faster,” he said. “It gets through the infield faster. It gets through the outfield faster. You have to play different angles in the outfield, otherwise the ball will get into the gap. You kind of saw that on the (triple) Kendra (Bogen) got in her last at bat. It sort of snuck past the centerfielder, got into the gap and she was able to get three on that. It goes that fast (and) it makes a big difference.”

Radel was initially worried that the precipitation that hit the area the previous day would effect how the ball rolled across the surface, but was pleasantly surprised at how “normal” it played.

“It wasn’t slippery at all,” she said. “It felt normal, and I think we all adjusted well.”

GAME RECAP

Coming off a game in which it exploded for 19 runs and blasted two home runs in just four innings against Austin, Owatonna didn’t find quite as much success against the Spartans, but still managed to smash 14 hits and score at least one run in four of their six total innings at the plate.

After snatching a 2-0 lead on a Danika Ringhofer two-run single in the second, Mayo scored three unearned runs with two outs in the top of the third to snatch a 3-2 lead.

The Huskies quickly drew even when Kendra Bogen slapped a seeing-eye single through the left side of the infield in the bottom of the third and went ahead for good when Radel bounced a two-run single up the middle in the fifth.

The Spartans, though, refused to concede and drew within 6-5 with a two-run bloop single in the top of the sixth.

Zoie Roush gave the Huskies some much-needed breathing room and rounded out the scoring with an RBI single one batter after Kendra Bogen spun a triple through the speedy left-centerfield gap in the bottom of the sixth.

Pitcher Kennedy Hodgeman picked up her second win to start the season after surrendering two earned-runs and scattering 10 hits in seven innings of duty.

“Mayo came out to play,” Moran said. “They really wanted to play spoiler and really stepped up their game. They got some hits to fall, they got runners on base and we needed to get out of some jams. We had to make some big plays. We stayed composed and got outs when we needed to and limited them to no more than two runs per inning, and that was big.”

BOX SCORE

DOWNLOAD PDF

---

^{PHOTOS BY JON WEISBROD}