After a pair of Middle Border Conference victories against Saint Croix Central, Ellsworth’s softball team improved to 6-0, a feat only one other Panther roster has accomplished in the last decade.

Ellsworth’s 2023 squad joins the 2019 Panthers as the only teams since at least 2008 to begin a season 6-0 or better. The 2019 Panthers began the year 14-0, won a Middle Border Conference championship and played in a state tournament.

The 2023 Panthers have quite a different roster with varied goals and expectations compared to the 2019 team. However, Ellsworth head coach Tom Diercks believes that the ceiling for this year’s team is just as high as that of the 2019 squad, a team where he was an assistant coach.

“They are totally different, but this is a deeper team,” Diercks said. “2019 might have had more top-end talent, but I’m not sure. This team has all that potential because we’ve got that depth, especially at pitching.”

Of the six victories to start the year, Ellsworth’s most recent game, a 9-7 win on the road against Saint Croix Central, was the only contest even remotely competitive thus far. Before that Thursday afternoon game in Hammond, Ellsworth had outscored its previous five opponents 84-0.

One of those five games was the first of two contests last week against Saint Croix Central. When Ellsworth hosted SCC on Tuesday, April 11, the Panthers outscored the opposition 15-0. Diercks spoke about how his team’s bats have been red-hot to start the year.

“It’s been great,” Diercks said. “It has also been hard, because I’ve got other girls I want to get in there, and nobody has not held their own. Everybody is contributing and nobody has let us down, so it’s been great that way.”

Two days after Ellsworth defeated Saint Croix Central in a 15-0 drubbing, the Panthers traveled to Hammond for the second game of the season series against SCC. That contest proved to be Ellsworth’s first truly competitive game of the season.

Saint Croix Central scored a run in the bottom of the first inning to go up 1-0, which gave an opposing team a lead against Ellsworth for the first time all year.

The Panthers responded in the top of the second inning when junior Molly Janke tied the game 1-1 after she ripped an RBI double off the left field fence which scored senior Arianna Lalley from second base. One batter later, Ellsworth junior Morgan Kolodzienski gave the Panthers a 3-1 lead when she blasted a two-run bomb over the left field fence.

Saint Croix Central tacked on a run in the bottom of the second inning to make it a 3-2 contest. Then in the top of the third, Ellsworth took a 5-2 lead when sophomore pitcher Aliza Acker hit a two-run blast to straightaway center field.

Between the third and fifth innings, Central sprayed the ball around the park and scored five unanswered runs to take a 7-5 lead. Despite trailing late in the game, Ellsworth gave Central a taste of its own medicine, as the Panthers scored four unanswered runs and secured a 9-7 win to remain undefeated this season.

For coach Diercks, the victory on the road against Saint Croix Central was the Panthers’ first true learning experience of the year. He spoke about his girls facing and overcoming adversity.

“It’s the first game where we made mistakes, and we needed that,” Diercks said. “I’m really proud of the girls because they didn’t hang their heads, they stayed loud and I was impressed. These are the games where you really learn.”

With the win, the Panthers improved to 6-0 overall and 4-0 in Middle Border Conference play. Ellsworth joins Baldwin-Woodville (4-0) and Prescott (2-0) as the only remaining undefeated teams in the league.

Ellsworth’s upcoming series is against Baldwin-Woodville, a program that went to the state tournament last year and has either shared or outright won the conference championship the last two seasons. The Blackhawks return nearly all of their roster from last year, except for now-graduated ace pitcher Morgan Smetana.

Coach Diercks spoke about the series sweeps of both Amery and Saint Croix Central, as well as the upcoming matchup with a Baldwin-Woodville program that has been one of the best on this side of the state for the last decade.

“Those wins are huge and it puts us up, but next week is going to tell us a lot because Baldwin is strong, but we’re strong too,” Diercks said. “We have to play clean ball and we can’t have the mistakes we made (against SCC). The aggressive mistakes don’t bother me, but we had some non-aggressive mistakes like dropped balls. We’re going to have to play clean and pitch well.”

After going to Hammond and knocking off Saint Croix Central, Ellsworth went on the road the following day and defeated Hudson to improve to 7-0 overall.

Three days later, Ellsworth’s winning streak ended with an 8-5 defeat at home against River Falls. With the loss, the Panthers dropped to 7-1 for the season.

Ellsworth is slated to host Baldwin-Woodville in the first of the two-game season series on Tuesday, April 18. The first pitch for that contest is scheduled for 5 p.m.