By JEREMY SELLEW
Elizabeth Forward head coach Harry Rutherford wasn’t surprised with the impact Grace Smith made for the WPIAL champion Warriors this season. It was expected.
Rutherford and his coaching staff coached Smith when she was in seventh grade, a good enough player to join the junior-varsity fall ball team.
“We were expecting exactly what we got out of her for her freshman season,” Rutherford said. “She was in the gameplan before this season started. We expected her to have a big year.”
Throughout most of the season, up until the WPIAL playoff game against Knoch, Smith led the Warriors in RBIs and had one of the top three batting averages on the team. She went on to finish with a .316 average and 20 RBIs. And she’s this year’s Mon Valley Independent-BeeGraphix Breakthrough Player of the Year.
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