By By Ryan Satcher / staff writer
Feb. 28, 2004
The rain finally went away and the sun came out on Friday, but it didn't shine on the Meridian Community College softball team.
The Lady Eagles dropped their first three games of the season at Northeast Park in the 2004 Rush/Meridian Tournament.
Meridian lost to Motlow (Tenn.) State 5-2, Gadsden (Ala.) State 2-0 and then fell to Blinn (Texas) College 4-0 to close out the day.
"We haven't played yet this year," said MCC coach Robert Eakins. "Any time you get into a tournament of this caliber with the amount of freshmen that we have, it's going to make for a long day."
The Lady Eagles will play two games today in the tournament. Meridian will take on San Jacinto at 8:30 a.m. and then will play Okaloosa-Walton at 10:30.
In the game with Blinn, the Lady Eagles played well but couldn't come through with the hits they needed to pick up a win.
"We played well against Blinn," said Eakins. "I was satisfied with that. Even though we lost, we played within the game. Of course, we've got some things we need to do. We've got to motivate ourselves and gain some confidence in ourselves and that's going to come with time."
In the top of the first against Blinn, JorD'an Orr singled and Meridian had runners at second and third with two outs before Blinn got out of the inning with a strikeout.
Meridian fell behind in the bottom of the first inning to the Lady Bucs. Kristina Swart reached on an infield single and later scored on a single by Jenniel Pati to make the score 1-0.
The Lady Bucs added a run in the fourth inning on a single by Briana Woods to make the score 2-0.
Jennifer Crayton scored on a bunt by Pati in the fifth inning to stretch the lead to 3-0 but Meridian did a nice job of getting out of the inning with only one run allowed.
Blinn finished the scoring with a run in the sixth inning. April Taylor doubled to start the inning and scored on a single by Crayton to make the score 4-0.
Meridian was unable to get any hitting going. The Lady Eagles best chance of scoring came in the seventh inning when Swart came up with a diving catch in center field on a rip by Jessica Lawrence to help the Lady Bucs hold on to the shutout.
Motlow State 5
Meridian 2
Motlow State scored four runs in the bottom of the third inning and added a run in the fourth to take a 5-2 win over Meridian.
The Lady Eagles took an early lead with a run in each of the first two innings but could not hold on for the win.
Courtny Gray had a double for the Lady Eagles in the loss. Raleigh Odom, Nikki McClasky and Katie Barnett each added singles for Meridian.
Gadsden State 2
Meridian 0
Meridian only gave up three hits to Gadsden State in its second game of the day but could not get the bats going to pick up the win.
Gadsden State scored two runs in the top of the first inning on a single by Christina Adams to take an early 2-0 lead and shut out the Lady Eagles for the win.
MCC was only able to reach base on three hits. Sheena Evans had two of the three hits for the Lady Eagles.