Panthers get ready to open action in District Softball

Panthers get ready to open action in District Softball

October 11, 2001

STAFF REPORT

GRAND JUNCTION — The District I tournament, comprised of the five Western Slope teams, will be held Friday and Saturday at Kronkright Complex.

The pigtail game will be played Friday, Oct. 12 between Rifle and Montezuma-Cortez, the fourth and fifth seeds, playing each other for the right to meet top seed Delta Saturday at 10 a.m. MCHS takes a deceiving 2-17 overall record into the tournament. MCHS has lost four games by only one run and several others by only two runs this season.

In Saturday's, Oct. 12, other 10 a.m. semifinal, second seed Montrose will face third seed Palisade.

The winners of the morning semifinal games will play for the district title Saturday afternoon.

"Our gameplan will be to bunt some players home if we can get them on. Rifle did not handle its bunt coverage very well," MCHS head coach Charlie Rosenbaugh commented. "This is a team we can beat. We should have beaten them the second game on Friday. We have just got to cut down our errors. All season we seem to have one bad inning and that’s it for us. But I guess we are as ready as we’ll ever be."

Right now McKenzie Reed is hitting around .412. Jena Thompson has a .385 batting average. Linda Smart is the leadoff batter for the Panthers and is getting on frequently.

The 4A regional playoffs will be held Oct. 19, with the state semifinals and final to be held the next day. Regional and state tournament action for the classification will be played at Olympic Park.

The Panthers are coming off a road trip which took them to Rifle and Delta. They split with Rifle on Friday, Oct. 5, with the Panthers winning the first game 10-8 in nine innings but falling in the nightcap 5-6 in eight innings. They lost a hard-fought 5-3 setback to Delta in the first game but were pounded 12-3 in the second game on Saturday, Oct. 6.

Chelsea Cook picked up the win on the mound in that first game and she will get the starting nod against Rifle on Friday. Cook helped her own cause out by rapping a double. Rosenbaugh said he has been working with Cook in order to help strengthen her arm.

"We had other people on but we never could get them around," Rosenbaugh said. "We just are not getting the key hits when we need them."

That became more evident in their loss in the second game. Cortez had the tying run at third base and the winning run on second. A mix-up had a Panther get picked off at home when she ran towards home, reversed her run back to third, and then tried to head back to home where she was thrown out. Five fielding errors in that game did help matters.

Reed drilled a triple in that game, but no runners were on base at the time.

Cortez led Delta 3-2 but ended up losing 5-3.

"We had them but we just couldn’t hang on. We got runners on but our bunting was not there. We played pretty good ball, though, because we didn’t make a lot of errors," Rosenbaugh reported.

Reed had another good day at the plate as she went three-for-four.

In the nightcap, the Panthers were right there with Delta. A bad sixth inning fielding meant the end of the close game. Rosenbaugh said his players allowed easy hit fly balls to drop.