By Melanie Petrucci, Senior Community Reporter
Shrewsbury – On June 4, Oak Middle Schools’ baseball and softball teams played against counterparts from Northborough’s Robert E. Melican Middle School for their last games of the season.
Mike Bracken, girls’ softball coach from Oak Middle School said that they had a great inaugural season, winning 10 of 13 games, including their final game.
“[Forming a team is] something that has been talked about for a while and somehow it just never came to fruition,” Bracken said. “I think what they are seeing is that numbers are down in girls’ sports in terms of participation.”
The idea behind the formation of the girls’ team was to build excitement at this age level so they can move on to the high school teams.
“This is different than playing with a club team, you are playing for your town and with your classmates; you are going on bus trips together and having pasta parties,” Bracken noted.
Although the baseball team lost 3 to 2, Coach Matt Amdur said that they also did well overall, winning eight of this year’s games.
“It’s amazing to finally have baseball here at Oak Middle School and it’s been a great season… It’s more than we could have asked for, for our first year,” Amdur said. “Honestly, I couldn’t ask for a better group of guys and young men to have this experience with.”