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LAURA LEELoss to Seminole was a wake-up call for the Cougars.
LEARWATER - A lot of things have gone right for Countryside this season.
The Cougars won the No. 1 seed in their district and the PCAC title for the first time in three years. They swept rival Palm Harbor U. in the regular season. They are scoring more runs than they did last season and strung together 21 consecutive wins.
"There's been a lot of positives," coach Kaylyn Bayly said. "Not a lot of negatives."
Most of the bad could be wrapped up in one game. With little offense, defensive lapses and an overall lack of intensity, the Cougars were shut out by Seminole 5-0 a week-and-a-half ago.
"It's pretty rough to go all season and having that terrible feeling that you're going to lose," pitcher Bree Spence said. "It woke us up a little bit. I don't want to say we were getting lazy, and we weren't getting cocky, but we realized there are people constantly working to be better than you."
Countryside returned to practice with that in mind. Kit Dunbar said the team recognized that it can't rely on pitching to win games.
The Cougars are moving on, trying to forget the blemish on their record. They said they didn't talk about it when they were undefeated and they didn't talk about their state and national rankings either. Bayly said she took it as a positive that her team wasn't fixated on such things.
Then Bayly saw the Cougars fall into a lull. After beating ranked teams to win a tournament in Brandon and coming back from spring break to beat PHU for a second time, she said they may have become a little nonchalant about the rest of the season.
"You get kind of in a rut after a while," Bayly said.
Maybe it took a season for them to find themselves. The whirlwind of winning a state title still was swirling around Countryside last year, and this season the Cougars say they've been able to relax and do their own thing without the added pressure and extra attention.
This year's team claims to have a new identity. There are six seniors, and newcomer freshman Gionna DiSalvatore has been a major addition, second on the team with a .377 batting average.
"We want it more because this is our last year to do it," senior Nikki Delandy said. "We don't have any more chances."
Spence sees some similarities to that championship season two years ago. They played in the same tournaments and had a long stretch of wins before losing a game.
"Maybe it's a coincidence," Spence said.