FUQUAY-VARINA – There’s more where this season came from for the Holly Springs High softball team. The Golden Hawks finished 11-9 and made the young school’s first playoff appearance.

Although Holly Springs fell 1-0 in the first round on Tuesday night at Tri-Eight champ Fuquay-Varina (18-4), the future looks promising with only two seniors graduating and four freshmen in the regular lineup.

“Everything for us is up,” Holly Springs coach, Matt Clifton said of his young roster. “We’ve just got to be prepared when we come in next season to put the time in to improve.”

Freshmen Cianna Burt, Jenna Firestein, Kristen Krebs and Erica Nunn all played vital roles for the Golden Hawks this spring. Kristen’s big sister, Kelly Krebs, a junior, said the youngsters were difference makers despite their inexperience. She said the underclassmen didn’t require much mentoring at all. “I don’t really have any advice for them, really,” she said. “Honestly, they kind of made us this year.”

Another junior, infielder Bekah Loflin agreed.

“They came in already with their heads high,” Loflin said of the freshmen. “They expected a lot and they kind of picked us up.” The Golden Hawks ran into another group of determined and talented freshman at Fuquay, backed up by senior ace right-hander Alex Ryan. The Bengals got a run across in the fourth inning as freshman Natalie Budde scored on classmate Hannah Wallace’s RBI single.

In the top of the fifth, another Fuquay ninth-grader, Jessi Johnson robbed an extra bases hit with an athletic over-the-shoulder catch in left field to snuff out a Golden Hawks rally. “We’ve played them twice this year,” Clifton said. “They beat us 4-3. We beat them 2-1. I told the girls that I felt like the team that got the breaks – it was going to be a 1-0 or 2-1 ballgame. And that’s what we had. We played solid defense. We made a couple of mistakes there in that one inning that just kind of put us behind the eight ball.”