The North Sunflower Lady Rebels softball team put up some valiant efforts but wasn’t able to score any wins in their last five outings.
The Lady Rebels took on Kirk Academy at home but fell 12-5. The team then traveled to Carroll Academy last Friday but lost 13-3.
The team took part in the Indianola Academy tournament over the weekend but couldn’t muster a win, with time-limited games working against them.
“We didn’t play very well (in the Kirk game). We’re still working to grasp the concept of playing together,” Head Coach George Roberson said. “We started hitting the ball better in this game, we just hit it right at people. We committed 10 errors though and we only had four base hits but scored five runs.”
Coach Roberson noted the team played well in the Carroll Academy game but a walk-off grand slam gave the CA Lady Rebels the 13-3 win.
“I’ve known she could hit but I pitched to her anywhere. I’m not going to pitch around anyone. I told our pitcher that we pitched to her eight times and seven times she grounded out to the infield before she hit one out. I’ll take that every time,” he said. “We only had six errors. Mental errors and where to throw the ball – situational errors are mainly what we had. If we had chosen to go to the right base, we would have gotten outs. The Carroll game was a lot better.”
In the tournament, NSA faced IA first and lost 3-2 in a time-limited game of 50 minutes.
“We had the tying run on third and the go-ahead run on second but ran out of time,” he said. “We made two errors in the second inning and they scored three runs. The girls played hard and pitched well.”
In their second outing, the Lady Rebels took on Sharkey Issaquena Academy but again, with their backs up against the clock, ran out of time.
Coach Roberson rested his starting pitcher and put in his two B team pitchers but lost 10-6.
“We gave up 10 runs in the first inning and we came back and didn’t give up any in the second but were time limited again,” he said. “We made them commit more errors than we did. We had five hits and nine baserunners.”
The Lady Rebels then faced Winona Christian but walks hurt the team in the 12-0 loss.
“We gave up eight in the first inning but we played five before time ran out. We had quite a few walks in the first inning and you can’t defend against walks,” he said. “We’re playing a little bit better and I’ll take the blame for this one, we made a lot of baserunning errors that made us get thrown out easily. It was a good tournament to get in. I enjoyed it and the girls enjoyed it. Just wish it had turned out better for all of us.”
The team had one game at press time against DeSoto on Tuesday and are at Kirk today.
The Lady Rebels have another tournament, this time at St. Joseph in Greenville this weekend and will take on Tunica on Monday followed by a matchup with West Memphis on Tuesday the 17th.
