LOWER LAKE — Maybe Chris Emberson was the right man in the right place at the right time … or maybe he”s just that good.
Either way, the former Middletown High football and baseball star is the Record-Bee”s 2011-12 Coach of the Year for girls” sports after making the Lower Lake High School softball program relevant again.
In his first season at the helm of the Trojans, Emberson guided the team to a respectable 7-7 league mark, a 14-10 overall record and a berth in the North Coast Section Division IV playoffs.
To put things in their proper perspective, Lower Lake softball — the doormat of the county for much of the 1990s and well into the 2000s — had its first winning season since 1993 and reached the postseason for the first time since 1992 (a couple of years before this year”s group of seniors were born).
Emberson, who doubles as Lower Lake High”s athletic director, will be the first to give credit where credit is due — to his players. They really came through for the first-year coach.
“I felt like they could play with most teams,” Emberson said of his squad, which was dominated by underclassmen, all of whom are participating in summer ball to get a jump on next season.
“They never gave up,” Emberson said. “They played every inning, every out, every pitch.”
Emberson said he was well aware of the struggles of the softball program when he took the job, but the team”s poor performances for most of the last 20 years (between 1996 and 2001 the Trojans won a combined 12 games, two fewer than they won in 2012) didn”t deter him.
“It was an easy group to work with, they all got along,” Emberson said. “They bought in to what I was teaching them. Sometimes it”s hard to get kids to buy in.”
Building a feeder system at the middle school level is another of Emberson”s goals and to that end he has three eighth-graders and a seventh-grader playing on his summer team.
“I”m really proud of the girls,” Emberson said of his 2012 team. “They worked hard every day to get better.”
