JONESBORO — BJ Zipfel closed his tenure as Valley View’s softball coach with a state championship.
Zipfel’s Lady Blazers edged Nashville 2-1 in the Class 4A state final to earn the school’s first state softball championship in May. A few weeks later he was announced as Valley View’s Elementary Dean of Students beginning in the upcoming school year.
While Zipfel will continue to help Valley View’s cross country program as an assistant in the fall, he turns over the Lady Blazer softball team to new coach Kole Carpenter.
“I’ve been trying to do the administration thing for the last few years and there was an opening, and I evidently was the right fit,” Zipfel said. “It just all worked out at that particular time.”
The Lady Blazers set a high standard under Zipfel, reaching the state tournament in each of the seven seasons that were played to completion. Including the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, when Valley View played only five games before all spring sports were halted, Zipfel coached the Lady Blazers to a 165-42 record in seven-plus seasons.
Valley View was the runner-up in the 2017 Class 5A state tournament, falling 4-1 to De Queen, and brought home the state championship trophy this year.
“What a way to go out,” Zipfel said. “I’ll miss the game, I’ll miss the kids, I’ll miss the coaches. I’ll miss competing. I’ve been competing my whole life in something. If you’re going to go out, going out on top is the way to go. It all worked out.”
Zipfel is the Best Under The Sun Coach of the Year for the third time after leading this year’s team to a 27-5 record that included state tournament victories over Malvern, Harrison and Nashville.
After receiving a first-round bye, Valley View rolled up 26 hits, including five home runs, in the quarterfinal and semifinal rounds of the 4A state tournament at Nashville. The Lady Blazers had little trouble in either contest, routing Malvern 11-1 and Harrison 11-3.
The championship game at Benton was a pitcher’s duel between Valley View’s Riley Smith and Nashville’s Maci McJunkins. Smith allowed only two hits and the Lady Blazers scored one run each in the second and third innings, both with two outs, to prevail.
“We have had some good teams and I think the key this year was just we played our best softball in the state tournament this year. That’s what it takes,” Zipfel said. “We got to the finals a few years ago and played really well. We got beat 4-1 by a really good team.
“We played our best softball in the state tournament and that’s what it takes to win. The best team doesn’t always win. The team that is playing the best at that time wins, and that’s the way it worked out for us this year.”
Smith retired the final 10 batters of the championship game to close a banner sophomore season. She was 25-4 with 229 strikeouts and just 19 walks in 164 2/3 innings, ending the year with a 1.02 earned run average.
Zipfel said Smith’s approach was consistent from game to game.
“She pitched and she relied on her defense. It wasn’t, ‘I’m going to try to strike everybody out,’” Zipfel said. “It was, ‘I’m going to throw my game and try to keep them from hitting it hard and hitting where we’re not, and I’m going to rely on my defense back there behind me.’ The defense played great, they played as well as you could ask them to play.”
The Lady Blazers also supplied plenty of run support while compiling a .341 team batting average.
Senior catcher Lexi Davis and freshman second baseman Mackenzie Whitlock were the leading run producers with 36 and 33 runs batted in, respectively. Junior shortstop Anna Winkfield had a team-high .453 batting average and senior outfielder Izzy Riba scored a team-high 44 runs.
“I come into this thing every year thinking we have a chance to win this thing. It’s something we always talk about. You hate to jinx yourself and say we’re going to be state champions,” Zipfel said. “That’s not the way we usually word it, but we usually say we have a chance to win this thing, as good a chance as anybody else does. A lot of things have to take place between now and then for that to happen, and this year they finally happened.”
Zipfel has coached a variety of sports over two decades at Valley View. He has worked with the cross country team since 2012 and was named the Arkansas High School Coaches Association’s outstanding coach in girls’ cross country for 2020 after the Lady Blazers won the first of two straight state championships.
When Valley View started football at the junior high level, Zipfel and John Burgi were the school’s first coaches. He also served as junior boys’ basketball coach and senior high assistant basketball coach for 10 years.
Zipfel said he also worked with track and field for a couple of years and served as the softball assistant coach four years under Tommy Fowler, who was also his high school coach at Nettleton in the 1990s.
“Coach Fowler is the best teacher I ever had and I never had him in class,” Zipfel said of Fowler, Valley View’s athletic director. “They say sports teaches you things and he did a great job of it, and he still does it. He still teaches me things.”
Carpenter, who has been a football and track coach for seven years at Valley View, has 15 years of experience with softball. He takes over a team that will return five starters in the field and six from the batting order as Valley View returns to Class 5A.
Zipfel looks forward to watching the Lady Blazers next spring, although probably not on cold, windy game days.
“All I have to do is walk over. When the weather is nice, I’ll be here,” he said with a smile. “I’ll be a fair-weather fan probably.”
