Washington County Enterprise-Leader
Lady Tigers Open Softball Season
PRAIRIE GROVE GIRLS LOSE 6-0 TO ROGERS HERITAGE
PRAIRIE GROVE —A relatively inexperienced squad and a rash of early season injuries have made the beginning of the 2014 softball season a tough one for first-year head coach Dustin Beck.
Beck, who assumed the skipper duties from departing coach Chris Collins, has watched his charges struggle to a 1- 3 record which included a 6-0 loss to the 7A classification’s Heritage War Eagles on Thursday at Prairie Grove.
“We’re pretty young and we’re going to make some mistakes, we’ll just have to play through it,” Beck said. “We are also a little banged up. I have a roster of twenty-one players and five of them can’t play because of injuries, but it will be OK because we know it is going to be a learning process at the beginning.”
One of the more seasoned veterans on coach Beck’s ball club is pitcher Madison Skelton. The senior right- hander has been the Tiger’s work horse in the chalked circle for the better part of two seasons and toed the rubber against the War Eagles on Thursday. Skelton (1-3) struck out five batters and only allowed two earned runs on eight hits against Heritage, but watched as the defense behind her committed five errors which led to four unearned runs.
“The thing we talked about before the game was to just make the routine plays. If you make a great play that’s fine, but we needed to focus on fielding ground balls, throwing people out and catching routine fly balls. We needed to make them [Heritage] earn their runs, but we just gave them too many outs,” Beck said.
Offensively the Tigers didn’t fare much better, banging out just four hits and stranding six base runners against Heritage hurler Dasha Donahoe. They also had a pair of potential scoring opportunities wither on the vine when aggressive base runners were gunned down at the plate.
“We are going to be aggressive and stay aggressive,” Beck said. “Hindsight says I shouldn’t have done it [ sending base runners home], but that is part of being aggressive having people thrown out at the plate.”
Skelton fanned the War Eagle lead- off hitter to start the contest, but then watched as the next two hitters reached base on errors, with the second miscue leading to the first run of the game. Next up was Donahoe, who helped her own cause with an RBI single that made the score 2- 0 after a half inning of play.
Two War Eagle hits and another run scoring error allowed Heritage to increase their lead to 4-0 in the top of the third inning. The Tigers had the makings of an offensive rally in their portion of the third frame when with runners on first and second, Allison Skelton delivered a single into the outfield. Valarie Sheperd was thrown out at the plate trying to score from second base. The inning and scoring threat ended one batter later with a ground ball hit to Donahoe.
A potentially inning-ending, two-out Tiger error in the top of the fourth frame allowed the War Eagles the opportunity to cash in two more runs which swelled their advantage to 6-0.
In the sixth inning Prairie Grove’s Madison Cluck led off with a single then moved to second when Brooke Ketzler was hit by a pitch. The next batter Makenzie Terry hit a fielder’s choice ground ball that got Ketzler put-out and moved Cluck over to third base. Hoping to add a run to the scoreboard, Beck waved Cluck around third, however his efforts were thwarted when Cluck was thrown out at the plate, ending the last real opportunity to avoid the 6-0 final score goose egg.
For the Tigers on offense, Ketzler had a double, while Cluck, Allison Skelton and Anna Kidd all tallied a base hit apiece.