The trophy cabinets at Morgan High School showcasing the school’s sports accomplishments are packed with recently won trophies in just about every sport.

Except for softball. The softball cabinet has two trophies in it: a region title trophy from 1990 and another from 1992.

But company is on the way.

This year, the Trojans went 19-10 overall, 7-1 in Region 13, won a share of their first region championship since the 1990s and are the 2022 Standard-Examiner All-Area Softball Team of the Year.

Morgan effectively secured its region title with a 9-8, extra-innings win at Grantsville back on April 7, a win that itself ended a decades-long losing streak against the Cowboys and checked off a yearslong team goal.

“Some of the recurring goals are we gotta beat Grantsville, that’s what we want to do. It seems like every year we talked about, ‘How are we going to beat them? How are we going to finally beat them?'” Morgan coach Billy Peterson said.

Morgan had come close in the past to beating Grantsville several times, but GHS always found a way to win.

A cursory search of online records reveals the last time the Trojans beat Grantsville in softball was at least before 2002, and they’d lost 26 straight to the Cowboys since 2002.

Grantsville won the return game in Morgan a couple weeks later, 9-3 in a game that was tied 1-1 going to the 10th inning, but the result of the first game was one of the high points of the season, Peterson said.

“This year we were out there, it was a close game and they kind of jumped on us, put a bunch of runs on us, ‘Whoa we’re down (four) runs going to the last inning, it just all came together,” Peterson said.

The first game was tied 3-3 going to the fifth inning and Grantsville scored four runs to go up 7-3. Morgan struck back with five runs in the seventh, the Cowboys responded to send the game to extra innings tied 8-8 where the Trojans scored once the eighth, held Grantsville off the board and won.

“It was so amazing, surreal experience as a coach to watch it all unfold because so many things had to happen in that game for us to win that game,” Peterson said.

Peterson said he told the players and parents during the preseason player-parent meeting this was the best team he’d had since becoming MHS head coach.

The Trojans had six freshmen on the roster and a handful of them started, but Peterson said the defining characteristic of this Morgan team was balance.

“We didn’t have a lot of holes in the lineup, everybody in the lineup could get something done, they weren’t just an easy out and that’s not always been the case for us in Morgan,” he said.

Freshmen infielders Lexi Hardman and Kaiya Peterson led the team in batting. Hardman batted .495 with 49 runs scored and 30 stolen bases.

Kaiya Peterson hit .453 with 27 RBIs and 33 runs scored. Freshman Callie Averett pitched a team-high 106 innings for the team.

Having six freshmen may have given Morgan the appearance of an inexperienced team, but those freshmen had played a lot of travel ball before getting to the high school level.

“I think it helped a lot, although I can’t take away from the older girls,” Billy Peterson said.

Seniors Alexis Hicken and Viana Johnson started at critical positions of center field and first base, respectively. Junior Tess Polad started at shortstop and batted .411 with 37 runs scored and 14 stolen bases.

“Some of the girls that haven’t played comp ball still had the experience side because they know what high school ball is like, it’s seven innings, it’s a grinder, it’s traveling on the bus, it’s having that community, because those girls in comp, they haven’t experienced all that side of it,” Peterson said.

A 19-8 regular season translated into the No. 7 seed for the 3A state playoffs, but Morgan flamed out early in the tournament, losing 9-3 to No. 10 North Sanpete, then beating Ben Lomond 17-0 and bowing out 15-3 to Grand County on the elimination side of the bracket.

Just because the Trojans return most of their team next year doesn’t mean the same or better results are in store. Grantsville returns just about everyone from this year’s team and always plays a tough schedule before region play.

Still, Billy Peterson is excited for the future and it’s not just because the Trojans were as good as they were this year with six freshmen. The team held a camp one Saturday for girls ages 8-12 and more than 50 kids attended, which was more than he envisioned.

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