Big Inning Sparks Lady Tigers

BENTONVILLE — Kent Early was happy to see the big bats come alive Thursday. The Bentonville Lady Tigers softball coach was even more pleased to just see his team back on the field playing a game.

BENTONVILLE 15, SPRINGDALE HIGH 1 (5)

Springdale High 001 00 — 1 3 1

Bentonville 310 (11) X — 15 13 0

Baldwin, Staggs (4) and Bradley; Vaughn and Thomas. W -Vaughn. L - Baldwin. HR - none.

“Getting out here is great,” Early said. “We’ve been backed up and backed up (by weather delays) and we’ve got another game with Van Buren (Friday) so it was just good to get out here and see some pitches and see some different things. There’s things we can’t work on in practice and we see things we need to work on. And now we’ll get another chance with Van Buren to see where we need to make improvements.”

Ask Springdale and it might seem like the Lady Tigers (7-1, 3-1 7A/6A-West) don’t need much improvement at all. Bentonville scored three runs in the bottom of the first when Kate Lacina, Emma Kinsey and Morgan Vaughn led the inning off with three consecutive hits for a 3-0 lead. The Lady Tigers added a fourth run on a Whitney Freeman single and Maddi Hill RBI grounder in the second.

Springdale (1-10, 0-5) then kept things relatively close until the bottom of the fourth, when a 4-1 Bentonville lead turned into 15-1 as the Lady Tigers erupted for 11 runs on seven hits.

“I’m proud of our defense, we didn’t commit any errors and Bentonville hits the ball really well,” Springdale coach Ashlee Friend said. “We had some trouble on the mound and we only had three or four hits and we could have had more hits. But we had that one big inning against us and that’s the problem, because it eliminates the chances of us getting more chances.

“But we played good defense tonight and I’m proud of that.”

Lacina had three hits, 2 RBIs and two runs and Freeman had three hits and three runs to lead Bentonville, which had played two games last Saturday but still is way behind the rest of the conference in terms of overall games played.

“We played well Saturday and we’re looking forward to next week,” Early said. “Every time we’ve had a break it’s been 10 or 12 days, so this was actually a short break for us in between games. We were just excited to get back on the field.”

Upcoming Events