RAVENNA – There are times when you remember that Ravenna’s Emma Herremans is still a freshman, like on Saturday during the GMAA softball tournament championship game, when she was jumping around home plate as her teammates scored during a big inning against rival Oakridge.
To be fair, her teammates were jumping around, too, but not quite as high as Herremans, who looked like a super-excited 15-year-old – which she is!
“We’re having so much fun as a team, and I love the people I’m playing with, so I just get into it!” Herremans said.
Herremans has her occasional bad moments, like in the bottom of the seventh and final inning of that championship game. The Bulldogs had a 7-1 lead with two outs, one out away from clinching the tournament title.
An easy pop-up came her way at third base, which should have been the third out, but she dropped it, allowing an Oakridge rally to continue.
[1]By the time the third out came, Oakridge had scored three more runs, but Ravenna still escaped with an exciting 7-4 win.
“I was so mad,” Herremans said. “I had to try so hard to keep my composure. It was the easiest pop fly ever, and it popped out of my glove! It was just good to know that we still won, and my teammates had my back.”
The one thing that everyone notices about Herremans, however, is the difference the ninth-grader had made for her already-good team, particularly with her amazing bat.
Going into last week, she was second on the MuskegonSports.com area hitting chart with a smoking-hot .706 batting average, 5 home runs and 32 RBIs in 16 games.
Herremans has helped Ravenna to a great 19-2 start to its season with the state tournament just a few weeks away.
[2]“She hits the ball as hard as I’ve ever seen it come off someone’s bat,” said Ravenna softball coach Dave Sherman. “She just thrives when runners are on base. She wants to be the one to drive those runs in.
“She hits the ball deep, she hits homers and hit the gaps, she recognizes how the pitchers are going to try to pitch her, and knows how to go to all fields.”
If the name Herremans sounds familiar in a sports-like way, it’s because Herremans’ grandfather, Paul Herremans, is the longtime head coach of the Ravenna baseball team. Her uncle, Ravenna grad Todd Herremans, was also a longtime offensive lineman in the National Football League.
There are probably a fair number of people who assume that Herremans gained her interest in softball from hanging around her grandpa’s baseball team over the years, but that’s not the case.
She said she learned a lot from her dad, Scott Herremans, who is Paul’s son and former Ravenna baseball player himself. He’s been coaching his daughter since she was little, and is now a varsity assistant for the Ravenna softball team.
[3]“I just started out in T-ball, and decided that softball was going to be my sport,” Herremans said. “Me and my dad just worked hard to make me better. I started playing travel ball when I was eight, which helped a lot, and we started to train at home, which helped me get better. My dad’s been my coach my entire life.”
That doesn’t mean that Grandpa Herremans is not interested in how well Emma is doing in softball. He’s just busy with his baseball team, and keeps track of Emma the best that he can.
“He sees me play a little bit,” Herremans said. “When he’s done with their games he will walk over and watch ours, and he calls me after games to see how it went.”
Sherman and his varsity coaching staff were well aware that Herremans was on the way this season, and that she was talented and skilled beyond her years.
They knew she was automatic varsity material, and figured she would be a very nice addition to the team.
But Herremans said her big season this year probably has a lot to do with the frustration she felt last year, following a thumb injury that knocked her out of travel ball for six weeks in the summer, and a hitting slump that followed.
[4]In the fall she was invited to play for the Tennessee Mojo, a super elite national travel team that competes all over the nation.
While it was a huge honor to play with the team, Herremans said she didn’t get a great deal of playing time, and struggled at the plate when she did crack the lineup.
“I couldn’t hit at all,” she said. “I struck out like every game. I only played a couple of games in the field. There were 14 girls on the team, and I was probably one of the lowest.
“I think that made me try a little harder, and made me work on my swing. This year at the plate, I’m mentally ready for every pitch.”
Herremans has had more than her share of big games this spring, including on Saturday in the Greater Muskegon Athletic Association Tier 1 tournament.
In the first game, a 10-2 win over Whitehall, she had three hits, including two doubles and a triple. She also pitched the victory, scattering seven hits and striking out four.
In the second game, a 12-2 win over Reeths-Puffer, she had three hits, including two triples.
[5]Herremans wasn’t quite as hot in the plate in the title game against Oakridge, managing only one hit. She may have had another, but the Eagles wisely gave her an intentional walk late in the game.
Herremans didn’t care about her personal stats in any of those games. It was all about continued team success, particularly against Oakridge, the team that had beaten Ravenna in both games of a doubleheader just three days before, ruining the Bulldogs’ perfect record.
Ravenna was more than happy to return the favor on Saturday, giving Oakridge its first loss of the season and ending the Eagles’ five-year run as GMAA tournament champions.
“That was so much fun,” Herremans said. “The adrenalize was great that day. It was like way more fun since we had just been beaten by them. We knew we could come back, relax and win.”
Coach Sherman said the tournament championship meant a great deal to all of the players and his staff.
“We were pretty confident we could play with them, and pretty confident we could win against them,” Sherman said. “Things just had to fall right. It was very satisfying for us as coaches. We knew the players were disappointed on Wednesday, but we could also tell that they were hoping for another shot at them on Saturday.”
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