photo by: Conner Becker/Journal-World

Lawrence High coach Mike Byrn talks with a player during practice on Wedneday, April 5, 2023 at Lawrence High School. LHS has won three of its last five games.

After a stretch of lackluster seasons, including a 5-15 showing last year, Lawrence High softball is getting back on track under its new coach, Mike Byrn.

The Lions have had a rough stretch over the past few years, and nobody on the roster –not even the team’s three seniors — has been part of a winning season at LHS before. According to Byrn, the team has won just eight games in the past three seasons.

But this year, five games in, the team is sitting on a 3-2 record.

Both of the Lions’ losses so far were to Manhattan, which shut them out 17-0 in the first game of a season-opening doubleheader and then beat them 8-5 in the second game. But since then, Byrn’s team has been on a three-game winning streak and racked up 13 or more runs in each of those games.

“It’s about accountability,” Byrn said during Wednesday’s practice. “The players hold themselves accountable. The expectation is when you’re here, you give everything you got.”

Byrn, who worked as a police officer for 25 years, also had 17 years of club softball coaching experience under his belt before he accepted the head coaching job in July of last year. LHS wasn’t the only school offering him a job; he also had a competing offer from Washburn Rural.

So far this season, Byrn has been stressing the importance of work ethic, and his players are taking notice and buying into his message.

“There’s a bit of aggression there that we’ve never experienced before,” senior Emme Dye said. She said Byrn’s vocal presence inside and outside the dugout gets the group fired up.

“There’s a lot of respect that we all have for him,” said Dye, who finished 2-for-4 with two runs at Shawnee Mission West on Tuesday. “He values a lot of family aspects, school, and he just wants us to come out here and have fun.”

Now that the team is winning more consistently, Dye said their confidence is at an all-time high. And although there are only three seniors this year, Byrn’s 14-member roster features some dynamic players, including the lone freshman on the team, Sophie Rowley. She allowed just two combined hits through her last two starts, striking out four batters in just three innings on Tuesday, and Byrn said she and her older sister, Shea, have built a pitcher-and-catcher dynamic that screams confidence.

In the coming days, the Lions, who sit at No. 8 in the Class 6A West standings, will get to test their skills against the toughest competition yet. At 5:30 p.m. Thursday, they have a home game against Olathe East, and just two games out, on April 15, they’ll be facing undefeated Washburn Rural on the road.

But Byrn’s team is up for the challenge, and he said their athletic talents deserve to be recognized.

“I think every one of these kids wants to be treated like any other athlete,” Byrn said. “Quit looking at them like female athletes; they’re athletes that happen to be women. They’re tremendous athletes and they want to be pushed and they expect to be pushed like any man.”