Charles Henderson High School played host to a meet and greet for new CHHS head softball coach Chad Lapp Thursday.

Lapp takes over the Trojan softball program after spending a year as an assistant football coach at the school.

Lapp’s softball experience began at Prattville High School with five year of experience, something Lapp said was tough at first.

“That was the first time I ever coached,” Lapp said. “The first year I was out there it was rough because I didn’t know what I was doing. The girls were real young.”

However, Lapp soon learned more about the game of softball and became a better coach.

“We took our lumps that first year, but it helped me to figure out how to coach girls and how to make them winners,” Lapp said. “Two years later, we had a team that had only three losses in 16 playing dates. We just had an amazing team and an amazing run. We were able to do the same thing the next couple of years.”

Lapp said his time at Prattville helped him to realize his passion for coaching softball.

“I had a great time up there,” Lapp said. “I had so many great experiences up there that I found out for my love for football and my love for coaching football was slowly being taken over by this new sport I was doing. There’s so many things in girls’ softball that are so exciting and so different that it’s hard not to love it.”

Lapp’s love for the game has helped him to develop his own unique philosophy, one that he said begins with work that has to be put in during the off-season.

“The main thing to me is attitude and effort,” Lapp said.

“We’re going to do some things to teach the girls how to have a winning attitude. One of the things we’re excited about is our new weight lifting and conditioning program. That has not been a part of this program for a while, and I think it’s going to be an instrumental part of making these girls better athletes and better people.”

Lapp said having the team work together during the off-season in a conditioning program will help to increase team chemistry.

“When you do that, and you start off on a real good first step and you roll right into practice after you’ve worked together for six months, then starting practice isn’t really that big of a deal because you’ve worked together and you’ve already become a team,” Lapp said. “You already have this attitude where you feel like an athlete who can hit and who can run and can field because you’ve been trained to do those things.”

The conditioning program will be helpful because practices will be trying, Lapp said.

“Our philosophy is there is no standing around,” Lapp said.

“We have very fast-paced, energetic practices that give the girls a chance to compete with each other and have fun while they’re out there. When you practice like that, you’ll play like that. When you practice with that kind of enthusiasm and carry it over into a game and the other team sees it, they know they’re in for a fight.”

Despite last year’s disappointing season, Lapp said he thinks the future is bright.

“These girls have an opportunity to do a lot at Charles Henderson High School and we’re going to do whatever to help them make it to the next level,” Lapp said.

“I’m excited to be a part of that. We hope in the next few years that everything we’re going to do for these girls pays off big time.”