Photo by Chris Drummond: Russell-Tyler-Ruthton's Laken Baartman makes contact with a pitch during the Knights' doubleheader against Yellow Medicine East in Tyler Tuesday afternoon.

“Those two have worked very hard at their craft and to see it all come to fruition is an awesome thing,” RTR assistant softball coach Brian Baartman said. “Fastpitch softball is in both of their DNA. They were born to play ball.”

Thunder and lightning.

Kya “Thunder” Alderson and Laken “Lightning” Baartman are the two leaders on the Russell-Tyler-Ruthton softball team. In their two years of playing together, they’ve developed different perspectives on the game and each other.

“When I first met Alderson, I was only in seventh grade,” Baartman said. “I was terrified of catching her at first but we just practice a lot. That and she is the best pitcher I would say and we got used to each other.”

“I knew she would be on varsity and we started to build that connection,” Alderson said. “It continued to build and got stronger the season after that. Now we hang out all the time.”

Although three years apart, the two are like sisters off and on the field. The connection they’ve built as pitcher and catcher has been central to the Knights’ success. Alderson was named the 2023 Marshall Independent Player of the Year and is coming off consecutive seasons with at least strikeouts and an ERA under 1.00. Her dominant pitching allowed her to break the RTR single-game strikeouts record with 19 in a playoff win over Benson.

Her partner in crime, Baartman, also set a school record this year with four home runs on the season. The duo led RTR in every statistical category but failed to make it to the section championship for the second consecutive season.

The Knights were primed for a section championship — and, hopefully, state championship — run this season. The expectations were high and the two leaders knew it from the very first practice of the year.

“People had a lot of expectations for us and they knew we were going to have a good season, so we just wanted to prove them right,” Baartman said. “So we worked hard every day.”

Alderson said that success on the field starts with the effort they put in before gameday.

“We work out butts off. As long as we work our butts off from beginning to end, coach is fine with us having a little fun,” Alderson said.

One of the Knights’ season highlights was their 1-0 win over Edgerton/Southwest Minnesota Christian. The Knights were the only team that handed the Class A state champion Flying Dutchmen a loss all season and it was the only loss Edgerton had in 10 years on their home field.

Alderson pitched every game this season, compiling 19 wins in the process, and Baartman caught every game she pitched. Alderson and Baartman also think very similarly on the field, Alderson said.

“Alderson and I both love softball with all of our hearts,” Baartman said. “I knew after that first practice that me and Alderson would become best friends. If you have good chemistry between a teammate, you’re going to become family.”

The Knights started off hot with four wins the first week of the season before dropping a home contest to the Lac Qui Parle Valley Eagles, 2-0. Wabasso was the only other team to beat the Knights on the season. Along the way, Alderson and Baartman led the Knights to a Camden Conference championship and a season-long eight-game winning streak. The team’s 19-4 record on the season was the best in program history.

“When we started out the season, we just wanted to check off all these boxes,” Baartman said. “We wanted to just take one game at a time. We wanted to get to the Camden Conference championship game this year and to be honest, we didn’t know if we could do that. We win that and then we go down to beat the eventual state champions in Edgerton. So we checked off some boxes and I’m just so proud of this team.”

Heading into the playoffs, the Knights were selected as the No. 3 seed and Baartman had a .464 batting average, four home runs and 30 RBIs. In the circle, Alderson’s 278 strikeouts, 19 wins, 0.35 ERA and 0.61 walks and hits per inning pitched were all team bests. She also led the team in batting average at .512 and in RBIs with 35.

However, the winning came to a halt once the Wabasso Rabbits showed up.

Wabasso won the teams’ first matchup 4-2, marking the most runs Alderson allowed in a loss all season. The Knights’ costly errors allowed Wabasso to capitalize and secure the win.

The Knights got another crack at the Rabbits in the second round of the 3A Section tournament.

“We were thinking, ‘Hey, we’re ahead, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves though,” Alderson said. “In the back of our minds, we know that they still want to hit and keep throwing strikes that they can’t hit.”

“I would also say that having that lead, we built a lot of confidence,” Baartman said. “It was also us letting down and we didn’t play to our best ability, which killed us in the end because they came back and beat us.”

Wabasso 7-6 on a ground-ball walk-off. The loss forced the Knights into the elimination bracket and put them one loss away from the end of their season.

Alderson led the Knights past Benson and, after another elimination bracket win over Yellow Medicine East, the Knights had the rare opportunity for another rematch against Wabasso. The Rabbits had just lost 13-12 to top-seeded Kerkhoven-Murdock-Sunburg, setting up the third installment in the Wabasso-RTR trilogy in the elimination bracket semifinals.

“My mindset was, I have already seen that pitcher,” Alderson said. “You gotta go into the game like, ‘we can beat this team,’ instead of thinking that you can’t.”

“We were pretty confident going into that game,” Baartman said.” We said, ‘OK, you beat us twice, but you’re not going to beat us three times.”

After going down by five runs, the Knights made a furious comeback but came up short with a season-ending 6-5 loss.

Despite their season ending, Alderson and Baartman’s relationship persists in the offseason.

“Whenever I’m with Alderson, she’s just a happy, goofy person,” Baartman said. “Being around her is always fun. It is so fun catching her. She is just a blast and I’m so grateful for her.”

The goal of the leaders is to get their team to state and they want to build more team camaraderie.

“We are going to have summer practices, which is the first time we’ve ever done that,” Baartman said. “We do need to bond more as a team and work on things.”

With Alderson going into her senior year next year and Baartman going into her freshman year, they’ll have one more season together as RTR’s dynamic duo. They’ll cherish it, but they want to make this next upcoming season their best.