Johnson building a winner at Central City

For most of his first season as Central City softball coach, Dave Johnson wasn't sure there would be a second.

The players were mired in bad habits and a losing culture.

'It was tough,” Johnson said of that 7-35 debut in 2011. 'The players had been in the old system for two, three, four years. Some things, we could fix. Some things, we had to work around.

'But the last two weeks, the kids showed enough fight and life that I decided to come back.”

It has taken four years, and work still remains. But Central City has a winning team, and that in itself is major progress.

'To a lot of people, this does seem like a major turnaround,” Johnson said. 'But for those inside, we've been building for this for a while.”

That first seven-win season was followed by more competitive ledgers of 16-26, then 19-22. Then came this.

The Wildcats (20-5 overall, 11-3 Tri-Rivers) have moved into the Class 1A rankings, maybe for the first time ever, at No. 13.

'There's still learning going on. We're still vulnerable,” said Johnson, who served as a club coach at Solon before taking over the Central City program. 'The first game (in a double-header split with Calamus-Wheatland on Monday), we played errorless defense. Then we had six errors in the second game.

'The exciting thing is, even at 20-5, I don't think we've played anywhere close to our best softball yet. The girls are still eager to learn.”

Johnson's arrival included an overhaul of hitting technique, and the result now is a team full of line-drive hitters. The Wildcats are second in the state in batting average at .432, and despite the fact that they didn't have a home run until Veronica Coghlan popped one Monday, they are in the top 10 in slugging percentage.

The reason: 65 doubles, which also rates No. 2 in Iowa. Coghlan, a sophomore, leads the team with 16 doubles, 28 RBIs and a .595 average, and six of her teammates are hitting .400 or better.

That includes juniors Annie Detweiler, Madi Pavlis and Jessica Etten, all of whom have 24 RBIs.

'We're not a power-hitting team,” Johnson said. 'We're a gap-hitting team that runs the bases pretty well.”

Coghlan (9-1) and senior Kailey Tyne (11-3) have shared the pitching duties.

Johnson envisions this program as a perennial Tri-Rivers contender that challenges for state-tournament berths. It was a hard sell at first.

'We've been working on that change in mentality since Day 1,” he said. 'We're still working on that, even now.”

NEW HOME RUN QUEEN

Kendyl Lindaman of Ankeny Centennial became Iowa's career home run leader Monday, hitting her 55th in a sweep of Ankeny.

Lindaman, a junior who has committed to the University of Minnesota, passed Jadyn Spencer (Waterloo West, 2007-11) at the top of the list. Spencer hit 54 home runs in her high school career, and recently completed her collegiate career at Alabama.

She hit nine home runs as an eighth-grader, 10 as a freshman, 24 as a sophomore and has 12 this season.

l Comments: (319) 368-8857; jeff.linder@thegazette.com