Norborne Hardin-Central (NHC) has a new varsity skipper for its second season as a co-op softball program.

Tommy Dunkin succeeds Jason McKinney, a Richmond High School alumnus. But NHC softball isn’t new to Dunkin. Nor was Norborne softball before the co-op.

“I’ve been here for, oh, eight or nine years,” he estimated Aug. 15 during a team practice at Norborne, where the girls play their home games.

Like 2023, however, Brandee Doyle returns as assistant coach. Dunkin and Doyle, who works at Hardin-Central, are guiding a program that’s about evenly split between Hardin-Central and Norborne girls, Doyle estimated.

The Hardin-Central girls include two seniors – Addison Schachtele and Zoey Polk. Polk, a returning outfielder, sees a stronger sense of team unity than she did in 2023.

“A lot of the girls are … mingling a lot more,” she said. “It’s not just … split in half, like it was a lot there at the beginning of last year.”

As one of three hurlers, Schachtele has seen improvement in the pitching…