That Rowan County High School senior Amber Riddle was named Miss Softball 2009 as the best player in Kentucky should surprise no one. In fact, with the kind of numbers she put up this year and throughout her career at Rowan County, it would have been a real shocker if some other player had been named Miss Softball.
In a game that is often dominated by pitching, Riddle compiled the kind of offensive statistics that were akin to those from the time when high school girls in Kentucky played slow-pitch softball.
During her senior year, Riddle hit .610, slammed 17 home runs and drove in 64 runs. Her offense carried the Lady Vikings to the finals of the 16th Region.
For a career that began when Riddle was a seventh-grader, she shattered the state record with 55 home runs, the second most of any high school player in the country. She also holds the state record with 92 career doubles and 259 RBIs. No doubt her numbers would be even more impressive had she not missed her entire eighth-grade season because of knee surgery
While calling Riddle “the best I’ve ever seen,” Rowan County softball coach Larry Slone emphasizes that Riddle is more than just a great softball player. She also is an “outstanding person. It’s been wonderful for me to coach her, and she’s been a wonderful teammate to all that played with her.”
While her playing days for Rowan County High have ended, folks in Morehead and northeastern Kentucky will have plenty of opportunities to see Riddle play in the years ahead. She has signed a letter of intent to play softball for Morehead State University.
Riddle has gotten a little better each year. As she advances to the next level, it will be interesting to see just how much she improves in college.
We congratulate Riddle on being named the state’s best player by the state softball coaches association. We suspect she won by a landslide.
Editorials
Miss Softball — 06/13/09
Rowan County star ends high school career being the best
- Editorials
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Charles Chattin
Before it merged with Ashland Community College to form Ashland Community and Technical College as a result of the 1997 Higher Education Reform Act, the Ashland Area Vocational-Technical School compiled an impressive record for teaching job skills to young adults and placing more than 85 percent in jobs for which they were trained.
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Try again
It is time for Kentucky Speaker of the House Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, and Senate President David Williams, R-Burkesville, to cease playing political games and redraw district lines that are compact and are based far more on population changes during the first decade of this century than on partisan politics.
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'Asset poor'
More than one in four Kentucky households are “asset poor,” meaning that they are living from paycheck to paycheck with little or no financial cushion to fall back on should they suddenly lose their jobs or have another emergency resulting in a temporary loss of or delcine in income.
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Safer mines
The head of the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) says coal operators throughout the country are improving their operations and, as a result, mines are becoming safer. However, MSHA chief Joe Main said too many coal operators still “don’t get it” and are continuing to cut costs by ignoring safety. That’s why MSHA plans to continue targeting mines with a history of repeated violations for additional inspections.
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Not far enough
For the past three sessions of the Kentucky General Assembly, bills that would raise the minimum dropout age from 16 to 18 have been approved by the Kentucky House of Representatives by wide bipartisan margins only to die in the Senate without even a vote.
Now the Senate Education Committee has unanimously approved a dropout bill hailed as an alternative to the House bill, but it does not go nearly far enough. It is a halfway measure that would have only a limited effect on preventing teenagers from quitting high school before graduation and virtually assuring themselves of lives on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder.
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Not their job
The local government committee of the Kentucky House of Representatives has wisely killed a bill — dubbed “Cooper’s Law” — that would have allowed the family of the Lexington toddler with cerebral palsy to have a playhouse on their property despite a deed restriction that apparently prohibits such structures.
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Keeping FADE
Despite an increase in cost to the department, Carter County Sheriff Casey Brammell told the Carter County Fiscal Court that his department will continue to be active in the FIVCO Area Development Drug Enforcement (FADE) Task Force — at least for now.
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Needed changes
The soaring enrollment that Kentucky’s community and technical colleges have experienced in recent years could come to a sudden end — or at least be slowed — as about 5,500 students in the statewide system that includes Ashalnd Community and Technical College are expected to lose their financial aid under new rules being implemented by the federal government.
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Released early
While it is disappointing that 75 of the 952 prisoners granted early release in January have violated the terms of their releases, the good news is that none of the former inmates have been charged with new felonies. That’s an early, but positive, indication that the nonviolent felons released before their sentences were up have been carefully selected and are among those least likely to return to a life of crime.
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Obese children
Almost a decade after former Gov. Ernie Fletcher called childhood obesity an “epidemic” in Kentucky, a majority of Kentucky adults still think that there are too many overweight children in the state and they place the bulk of the blame squarely on the shoulders of their parents.
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Charles Chattin
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