East Mountain High School has a trio of new head coaches helming the school’s softball and baseball programs. The players on both programs have high hopes the new skippers will steer the teams to the state playoffs.
Elizabeth Moore and Valerie Norman are the new co-head coaches of the Timberwolves’ softball program.
Before last week’s season-opening win against the visiting Socorro Warriors, Moore and Norman talked about how they needed to take the reins together as a pair.
“They [the school] wanted to make one of us the head coach and we said, ‘No, we’re splitting the work equally, and we want to be recognized equally and compensated equally,’” Moore said.
“Yeah, we threw a curve ball to them,” Norman added with a chuckle. “We know each other, we work well together, and it makes sense.”
Both Moore and Norman were assistant coaches under previous head coach Bill Radosevich. Radosevich led the team to the state tournament the past three years.
“Bill has built a great program,” Norman said. “So we just wanted to keep it going.”
“He was grooming us for this last year,” Moore said. “We wanted to keep the momentum going.”
The momentum was notable during the Lady Timberwolves’ doubleheader sweep over Socorro: East Mountain won the first game 13-5 and pounded Socorro 21-5 in the second game.
Seniors Abby Moore, who pitched the first game, and catcher Aubrie Marez spoke about the new season.
“I feel pretty confident, I’m excited,” Abby Moore said, adding, “I haven’t pitched since I was 10 years old in Little League.”
“My hope is to make it to state all four years of my high school career, that’s the biggest thing,” Marez said. “And then, you know, just have fun.”
The coaching duo of Moore and Norman said they won’t change much from Radosevich’s game plan — other than adjusting for the increase in the number of players which made it possible to create the school’s inaugural softball junior varsity squad.
“This is the first time in East Mountain history that we’ve had a JV team,” Moore said.
On the baseball side, Matt Garley is the new skipper. The team started its season with a smattering of wins and losses against bigger schools, and Garley said he thinks his squad will be better for it.
“We’re playing a tough schedule early,” Garley said. “We’ve out-hit every team so far.”
The Timberwolves dropped a pair of two-run losses to Hope Christian and Bernalillo, respectively, but beat Del Norte and Pojoaque—all of them Class 4A schools.
Garley played college ball at NMMI and Eastern New Mexico University and spent the past few years as an assistant coach at Sandia High School. He hopes to bring to his first head coaching gig what he’s learned along the way.
“I just want to take pages out of that chapter book and bring it over here,” Garley said. “I think we have great kids, we have a ton of talent, we have a good mix of experience and younger players.”