A new player for the Lady Saints softball team is freshman Grace Petersen. Petersen is from Wheat Ridge, a suburb of Denver, in Colorado where she played at Holy Family High School.

Her senior year she had some impressive statistics hitting .522 with 28 RBIs. This helped the team out to placing third at the state tournament for Colorado. Both her junior and senior years, Petersen was an All-Conference and All-Colorado pick.

Now Peterson will continue her path in softball as a Lady Saint as a shortstop.

“[Seward County Community College] gave me the opportunity to play softball and possibly move on to a bigger and better school after my two years here,” Petersen said.

Petersen has now been playing softball for eight years, while enjoying other hobbies too. She enjoys going hunting and also horseback riding, but doesn’t play many other sports.

Petersen is the second youngest in her family. She has two older sisters named Beth and Mary, both of which played softball at Regis University in Denver. She also has a younger brother named Jacob.

While Petersen may miss her family along with other things from home such as the mountains, she is focusing on continuing her softball career.

“Our goal as a team is to go on and win Regionals,” Petersen said. “My goal is to earn a position on the field and earn a position batting.”

Andrea Gustafson, head coach of the Lady Saints softball team, said, “Grace is a good kid. She works hard and wants to be the best player she can be. I think that she is one of those kids that keep practices light and entertaining. The girls like to have a good time with Grace. She’s a pretty good sport when it comes to certain situations when the kids are all over her for something. But she has a good attitude and she takes it all in stride.”

With only two games left in the fall season, Coach Gustafson has seen what needs to be done to improve before the spring season.

“We have definitely have had our ups and downs this fall,” Gustafson said. We have a lot of new people, a lot of young kids in new positions, so it has definitely been a learning experience. We have our good days and we have our days where we struggle. But we have been slowly getting better. We are looking a lot better in practice everyday.”

The Lady Saints next game will be in Liberal against Northeastern Junior College on Saturday at 3 p.m.