Last year, it took a walk-off win in the FHSAA Class 1A state semifinals against Holmes County (Bonifay) and a miracle comeback against Branford in the championship game for Trenton softball to win the school’s third state title since 2019.

“I think last year we were really nervous,” said left fielder Charleigh Philmon, one of only four seniors on the roster. “I think we were a young team. This year, I think we had a lot of confidence. We weren’t cocky and we just came in and we just did it.”

That they did, in dominating fashion.

Trenton edged Williston, 2-1, in the FHSAA Rural Region 4 Final, but they outscored top seed Liberty County (Bristol) and No. 2 seed Northview (Bratt) by a combined score of 20-3 in the final four to repeat as state champions.

“We worked as a team no matter what, whether it was a sac fly, a sac bunt, everybody did their job in the lineup,” said senior shortstop Olivia Weaver, who missed half of the season with an injury.

But how did they go from a 2-1 win to 20-3?

“A lot of it comes with mindset,” said first-year head coach Kevin Benson, who was an assistant coach on last year’s state championship team. “The game against Williston, there’s a lot of emotions in that game. They’re only 30 minutes down the road. We know each other really well. They play with each other a lot in travel ball and typically we play each other at least two times, if not three or four times per year, so we know each other a lot. We tried to press a little too hard at times at the plate and we didn’t produce quite what we needed to produce. We struggled putting bunts down in that game.”

When they returned to practice, they put a huge priority on executing small ball.

Against Northview in Wednesday’s state title game, an 11-1 win in five innings, three straight batters got the bunt down.

In the third inning against the Chiefs, freshman Emaleigh Philmont had a sacrifice bunt to advance runners, freshman Addilynn Welbers followed with a bunt single and an RBI, and Emma Brideson, a Seminole State College signee, had a sacrifice bunt and RBI.

After their 9-2 win against Liberty County in the state semifinals, the Tigers were anticipating another All Area final against Branford, but the Bucs lost to Northview in the other state semifinal, denying Branford its third straight state championship game appearance.

“Playing somebody new that you haven’t faced many times before, I think, gives them a little bit less pressure at the plate,” Benson said. “They just go up there and do their job and do what they do best.”

Philmon agreed.

“I think a lot of it is energy,” Philmon said. “We play a lot better when we don’t know anything about the other team or we’ve never played them before. Playing Williston, we’ve played them before, we know who they are, they’re close to us…we just do really well against other teams we’ve never played.”

The Tigers (19-6) finished the season with a 10-game winning streak, but midway through the season, they lost four of six games.

“At the beginning of the season, we had some different players on the team, and we faced a lot of adversity,” Philmon said. “We played a lot of hard teams and some teams that we should have beat that we didn’t beat, but we weren’t really playing as a team. Then it just kind of clicked midseason and we started doing really well.”

They lost five seniors from last year’s team, Weaver didn’t play until late March, lots of lineup changes early in the year, and they had a lot of players who were out sick during the middle of the year too.

“We had some that couldn’t even come to games because we were so sick,” said sophomore pitcher Addison Allaire, who finished the season with only 21 walks and 184 strikeouts in 98.1 innings pitched. “I got sick. It was definitely hard, but we got through it…we did OK, but there was obviously something missing without her (Weaver). She’s been here so long. She brings a huge part to the team, and we love her.”

One of the lineup changes paid huge dividends.

Philmon moved from the No. 2 spot in the lineup to the No. 9 hitter.

She hit her first home run since her sophomore year in Wednesday’s state championship game.

“We see it every day in practice,” Benson said after the game. “She’s got a ton of power…she went from the two-spot last season to owning the nine-hole this year. I like to use someone in that nine-hole that can swing with power or be finesse and play small ball with. 

“She exemplifies that in all phases. We use her a lot for small ball. She’s one of the best bunters that we’ve got on the team, but she showed off today that when she needs to come up with a big hit and use that power, she can produce for us wherever we need her.”

They fought through the adversity to win their second straight state title.

“We definitely had a harder time this year,” Allaire said. “Even through regionals, we had to play a good game with Williston, they’re a good team…we jelled together as a team and really wanted to play for each other. This has been our goal since we started conditioning in January and I’m just really happy that we got to pull it off.”

One of the key pieces to the puzzle was the addition of MacKenzie Fisher, who came from Chiefland.

She moved from center field to catcher midway through the season.

“She has been a sparkplug in the locker room and in this dugout, a source of leadership,” said Benson, who called her scrappy and feisty. “There are a lot of her teammates who had been in this game before and a big part of why she decided to make that transition (to catcher) was she wanted to compete at a high level…early on we could tell that she was going to make a huge difference for our team regardless of where we ended up putting her.”

Fisher (team-best .427 batting average) came to Trenton as a pitcher and outfielder and had never been a catcher at the varsity level, although she did catch for Allaire in 12U softball.

“She’s an amazing pitcher,” Fisher said. “I love catching for her.”

Benson said the difference between Allaire as a freshman, when she didn’t finish the state championship game, to her sophomore year with back-to-back complete games was her endurance.

“This year we put a preference and a priority on that, and she took it serious,” he said. “She really worked hard to build her endurance in the circle because of the pride and professionalism she takes to her craft. That proved to be extremely beneficial.”

And so was playing somebody new.