El Dorado and Smackover meet on softball field.
Smackover’s Reagan Richardson hit a tworun home run in the first inning Wednesday as the Lady Bucks held down El Dorado 7-3 in non-conference softball action at the El Dorado-Union County Recreation Complex. Smackover improved to 17-5 on the season while the Lady Wildcats slipped to 9-10.
Abby Crawford fanned nine batters and held El Dorado to just four hits in seven innings to secure the victory.
“They jumped out with the home run in the first inning. We just couldn’t seem to get going after that until late,” said El Dorado coach Chris Ezell. “We scratched a couple of runs in but it was a little short.”
The Lady Bucks managed seven hits against three different pitchers. Richardson was 2-for-4
with a homer and a double.
“I thought we hit the ball good,” said Smackover coach Dennis Steele. “I thought their pitchers did a good job. They had different pitchers, all three of them that came in and kept us off stride. Our last games, we’ve averaged 15, 16 hits a game.
“We got some dink hits but in the book, they go as base hits. I thought we made good contact. There are some things we have to do better - base running and at the plate and things like that.
“But, whenever you play a quality team, when you play like we did, I’m happy.”
Richardson’s two-run homer in the first came against Payton Scarlett. Smackover was denied more when Ava Dunn made a running catch on Lydia Pullin’s line drive in the left-center gap and then pegged to second to double up the base runner.
Larran Simmons came
on to pitch in the second for the Lady Wildcats. Smackover scratched a run in the third when Richardson doubled off the fence in leftfield, moved to third on an error and scored on a passed ball.
The lead swelled to 6-0 with three runs in the fourth. Megan Mullins singled to left and was sacrificed to second by Brooklyn Dees.
After Vanessa Lofton worked Simmons for a walk, Sabrina Estridge drove in Mullins with a single.
Grace Hargett came in to pitch for El Dorado. With runners on second and third, a passed ball and then an error on the same play allowed both runners to score.
The Lady Wildcats got a run back in the bottom of the fourth. Allyson Silmon walked and Simmons singled. With one out, Lea Jones hit an infield pop up that was dropped, allowing Silmon to score from third. Smackover got out of the inning when Taylor Mayo’s sharp liner to second was fielded by Mullins, who fired to first for an inning-ending double
play.
“I thought Megan Mullins played an outstanding game at second base,” said Steele. “She had four or five hard-hit plays. She turned a double-play on one and did a nice job there.”
El Dorado scored again in the fifth. Hargett walked and scored on Scarlett’s two-out single, cutting the deficit to 6-2.
The Lady Bucks got a run in the seventh. Richardson reached on an error. Lexie Gilbert stroked a two-out single before Pullin reached first on a dropped third strike to load the bases. Mullins then cued an infield flare that landed in no-man’s land between home and third. Richardson raced home for the run.
The Lady Wildcats scored their final run in the bottom of the seventh when Mayo walked and came around to score on a passed ball.
Hargett finished up strong for El Dorado. In 3 2/3 innings, she struck out eight batters and allowed just two hits.
“She’s a good pitcher. She doesn’t throw a lot of strikes, which is good.
You don’t have to throw strikes if you move the ball around and get ahead of the team,” said Steele.
“Playing three games in a row on back-to-back days and we’ve got Lake Hamilton in a conference game (today), we were trying to manage our
pitching,” said Ezell.
“Hargett is still coming back from an injury so we’ve been trying to limit the innings there. She just went six last night. So, we used all three pitchers tonight. We’ll probably have to do it again (today) and limit the innings on her.
“We were a little flat, for whatever reason. That’s our job to get them fired up and just find a way to go out and compete on every pitch, no matter who is pitching for us. We have to have players make plays behind them.”