Last season, it was clear early on in the District 5-4A schedule that either Guyer or Ryan would take the district championship in softball.

Turns out, the Denton ISD foes shared the title, both finishing the district season with 13-1 marks.

And while each team returns eight starters from last year’s squads that coincidently were both bounced from the postseason in the first round, both coaches know that when the 2010 district season begins today every team is starting fresh.

“I’d like to say I can predict the future,” Ryan head coach Aimee Foutch said. “I’d say that’s what it seems it [Guyer and Ryan being the two top teams] would be. But Wichita Falls Rider’s pitcher [Sammy Hislop] has gotten older and better, and I think she’s going to be a challenge for the days any team doesn’t give their ‘A’ game. And [pitcher] Brittany Talley at Little Elm is good at controlling games.”

Talley, who originally committed to Arkansas, has signed with Texas Tech and Foutch and Guyer head coach Keith Medford both said she can win games by herself, making Little Elm a dangerous team.

“If you don’t bring your ‘A’ game, they can sneak one by you,” Foutch said of Talley and Hislop. “You’ll have to be awake and paying attention the whole time.”

Added Medford: “I wouldn’t count out Rider by any stretch. They always play everybody tough and I think they turned the corner last year. Little Elm’s pitcher is as good as there is around. Any time you have Division I pitcher to compete against it’s going to be a challenge.

“You really can’t count anyone out.”

But you certainly can not count Guyer or Ryan out either.

Guyer (11-5-2) returns four-year starter Kylee Crosek in the circle along with junior Layne Greenlee, who emerged on to the scene last year by finishing in the top 5 in the Dallas-Fort Worth area in average (.500), home runs (seven) and RBIs (50).

With many players who have multiple seasons of starting experience, Medford said his on-field leadership is at a level he’s never seen as a coach, even dating back to his days at Irving.

“It’s great, especially when you have young players like having four freshmen on varsity,” Medford said. “It’s great timing to have those four freshmen up with us because they learn more from those girls than they do from the coaches. There’s a lot of times during practice where I don’t have time to get words out of my mouth before there’s a junior or senior saying the same thing.”

Denton enters district play after seeing some success in non district play, including a 2-2-1 showing at its tournament over the weekend, and head coach Rhana Ramos is excited to get things going in district play with no where to go but up after finishing in last place a year ago.

“The only place we can go from here is up, and the girls are playing better now than they’ve ever played,” Ramos said.

In her third season as Denton’s head coach, Ramos said her players are finally buying in to what she wants the Lady Broncos’ program to be, and a lot of that credit goes to her two seniors, Karis Johnson and Shelby Bergeron.

“There’s been a lot of change come about and all the girls I have with me now are girls that believe in what I’m doing and what I’m trying to do for the program,” Ramos said. “So that also makes things exciting.”

Ryan (12-6) has the benefit of having two of the area’s top pitchers back in seniors Tara Tague and Samantha Betts, and Foutch said having her pitchers as two of her three senior starters is a plus.

She said after last season’s disappointing conclusion, she thinks her seniors will lead the charge for redemption come postseason time.

“You always want to get further than you did the year before,” Foutch said. “Being that my pitchers are seniors they’re gonna want to fight to go as far as they can go. That’s the excitement is that the nucleus is seniors and they’re gonna be going for it.”

Last season’s district title was old hat for Ryan, but for Guyer it was new territory and Medford said he take partial blame for the Lady Wildcats disappointing, brief playoff run after such a successful regular season.

“Luckily we have eight kids who went through that,” he said. “Hopefully that will motivate our kids not to just settle. District championships are nice but I think we kind of took a deep breath after that and I’ll take the blame on that. We do preach that we want to win district, but I think the focus is we want to win the district and make a long run in the playoffs. That’s what our goal is. I’ll take a lot of that blame for last year.

“Hopefully we can learn from it and be motivated by it. There’s not a lot of times you get a second chance at things and eight of our kids get a second chance at getting a different result.”

ADAM BOEDEKER can be reached at 940-566-6872. His e-mail address is aboedeker@dentonrc.com.