By By Matthew Nascone
The Diamond Queens of the Atmore area have surfaced and made an appearance on the pages of The Atmore Advance. This is the inaugural collection of talent from the Escambia County High School, Escambia Academy and Northview High School softball teams.
You may have caught the baseball edition last week and been wondering when the softball edition was coming, well here it is. In this edition of the Advance the 12 ladies who showed what they could do on the diamond are represented.
It was a joy to watch these athletes in action on the field as they put on a display of immense showmanship and talent.
You may wonder why they are called the Diamond Queens. It is a simple explanation. Last week's all-star baseball team was named the Diamond Kings after the baseball cards put out by Donruss.
The Diamond Kings baseball cards are the special inserted cards in the Donruss series of baseball cards that display the studs of the Major League Baseball league. They are not just a photograph, but a painted picture of those players.
And they were beautiful paintings of such players as Nolan Ryan, Cal Ripken Jr., Roger Clemens, Tony Gwynn and many other superstars of the professional baseball ranks. These were the 'it' cards when I was growing up and they seem to still be popular nowadays.
They were the coveted cards and now the softball all-star team has the same recognition as the baseball team, but they are the Queens, obviously.
Now this is something that each of these girls can put in her scrapbook is she so desires, or she can read and throw away. But I would hope you ladies would scrapbook them because you deserve to remember your years as an all-star.
Anyways, these 12 individuals' statistics stood out to me and that is why they are on this team. And I would like to thank each one of them for dealing with the heat during our photo shoot Thursday.
This was definitely a hard team to put together with so many deserving athletes and such little space to put them in. But here are the stats that shone the brightest to me.
The Escambia County Lady Blue may not have made the playoffs, but it was not due to Raven Culliver's efforts. She had 82 strikeouts and only 15 walks in 110 innings pitched. And Courtney English helped her out with two home runs and eight RBIs at the plate. Leslie Lyons, Latesha Lee and Michaela Norman were also speedy on the basepaths with at least 10 stolen bases each.
And the Academy Lady Cougars made the playoffs behind the strong performance of senior leaders Rachel Ellis and Heather White. Ellis hit for a .361 average with one home run, 12 RBIs and six stolen bases and White had seven RBIs and a .302 average.
The Northview Lady Chiefs were not able to get into the playoffs a year after winning their district tournament, but seniors Jill Kelley and Misty Lord did their best to push the team into the playoffs. Kelley hit for a .296 average with one home run and five RBIs while Lord had six RBIs and 16 runs scored.
And these are the Diamond Queens of the Atmore area. Congratulations to all who made the team and good luck to all athletes for next year.
Matthew Nascone is sports editor of The Atmore Advance. He can be reached at 368-2123.