WILLARD — If you would have asked Madison softball coach Tim Niswander before the start of the 2026 season what the limit was on the potential of his Rams team, he would have said limitless.
But after a regular season where the Rams stumbled out of the gate with a bunch of injuries and unhealthy players to finish two games under .500 and earn the No. 4 seed in the district tournament, Niswander would still have been confident in his team, but still a little worried.
On Saturday, May 23, he saw his Rams finally reach that limitless potential with a 10-2 Division III district championship win over Celina in Willard. They will now play Ontario (22-6) at 5 p.m. on May 27 at Ashland University in the regional semifinals.
“We always thought this was possible,” Niswander said. “We knew that if we ever got healthy, this was a possibility. We kept telling the kids that once we got healthy, we would be OK. We just hoped it wouldn’t have taken as long as it did, but we will take it.”
The Rams are finally healthy and rolling. They held a 3-2 lead into the fifth inning before plating three runs in the bottom of the fifth and four more in the sixth to cruise to an 8-run victory. And it was a total team effort. Chloe Jeffers led the way with three hits out of the No. 6 spot in the lineup while Lexi Lewis, Caliyah Clapper, Sophie Lowe and Allie Shrader had two apiece and Campbell Kiser had one. Shrader had three RBIs including a two-run home run to cap off the big sixth inning while Clapper and Kiser had two RBIs apiece and Jeffers and Lowe had one apiece.
Clapper, just a sophomore, turned in another dominant performance in the circle allowing two runs, one earned, on seven hits with 11 strikeouts in a complete game and the second district championship victory of her young career.
“We told each other that we needed to take this tournament and play for each other and see what we can accomplish,” Clapper said. “We want to keep playing until we can’t anymore. The regular season was difficult, but when we realized that all we needed to do was play like we know how to play, we got things going.”
The Rams, now 14-14 to get back to .500, finished the regular season 12-14 and even suffered a seven-game losing streak from April 30-May 12. But something switched as they have now won four straight including two tournament games by a combined 15-3 score.
“It’s all them,” Niswander said. “They have decided this is the way they wanted to be now and they wanted to come together to accomplish our goals. They want to keep playing and I love coaching them when they want to keep playing.”
And it helped when Clapper finally returned to 100% after preseason hip surgery and a broken thumb suffered three weeks ago.
“The whole season was so hard,” Niswander said. “I honestly believe when Caliyah (Clapper) came back healthy, every one took a deep breath and believed we were whole now. The hard things we have gone through made us better coaches and players and people.”
Kiser, the only senior on the team, remembers sitting down with her team as a group and reiterating that the regular season was behind them and they can flip the script with a good tournament run.
“We have gone through so much adversity with our slow start,” Kiser said. “It means so much to make it back to regionals. We knew we have been here before and knew what it took to win it. We sat down as a group and decided that our season actually starts when we play our first tournament game and it worked. We have been scoring and making defensive plays that we didn’t make earlier in the year.
“Something flipped in us to where we are now playing for each other instead of ourselves,” Kiser added. “We now believe in our teammates and trust them to make the right play and be unselfish. Everyone is showing up for each other.”
The district title is the Rams’ second straight and seventh in program history joining teams from 1995, 1998, 2013, 2018, 2021 and 2025. The 2026 team is the first to ever go back-to-back.
“We knew what it took to do it last year, so we went into this tournament with faith that we could lean on our experience from last year and do it again,” Clapper said. “Hopefully, we can go further.”
The 2026 title came exactly five years to the day when they won it in 2021. That 2021 title had a similar path when the Rams started the postseason 11-14 before winning six straight to end the season and make it all the way to the regional championship game.
“We have only won seven and I am proud to be a part of five of them and experience this with a great group of kids, but this group is the only one to do it back-to-back in school history,” Niswander said. “It is unbelievable feeling seeing your kids like this.
“I went into the hall of fame this year and I would trade that for this feeling every singe time,” Niswander added. “To celebrate with the kids, seeing them smile and be happy and be in each other’s corner is the reason I coach. It’s the greatest feeling in the world.”
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This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Madison softball flips script on 2026 season with district title
Reporting by Jake Furr, Mansfield News Journal / Mansfield News Journal
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