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The Lady Raiders softball team showed some improvement in Monday night’s defeat to the Edna Cowgirls. Originally moved from its scheduled date on April 6 due to a rain cancellation, Rice had a much more complete effort than in their game against the Yoakum Bulldoggettes earlier in the week on April 4. Despite their improvement, the Lady Raiders were not able to keep up with Edna as they dropped the Monday make-up game after falling to Yoakum by a large margin.
Vs Yoakum, L, 16-1
Rice could not get much to go their way as they faced off against a top three team in the district. Offensively, the Lady Raiders struggled somewhat to deliver hits to move their baserunners along the line. Ava Torres and Abigail Hoelscher delivered the team’s only hits, and Torres batted home a runner in the second inning for the Lady Raiders’ lone score. Even though their bats were not connecting, Rice found ways to get on base with a total of four walks in the game.
While the offense for Rice struggled, the offense for Yoakum soared. The Bulldoggettes scored at least three runs in every inning including five runs in the first and third before the officials called the mercy-rule victory in favor of Yoakum after the fourth inning.
Vs Edna, L, 9-4
The Lady Raiders dug deep and found a decent hitting performance against the Edna Cowgirls after rescheduling their rained-out game to Monday. Rice finished with five hits and was once again led by Ava Torres who finished with a team-leading two hits. Abigail Hoelscher, Brooke Ford and Kimberly Hernandez added an RBI each as the offense had one of its most quality days of the season.
Unfortunately for the Lady Raiders, they once again faced off against a team that had both sides of the ball clicking well together. Edna started hot with both their offensive and defensive gameplans. Through the first four innings, the Cowgirls scored all nine of their runs while holding Rice scoreless in the same span. The top of the fifth is when the Lady Raiders started their comeback efforts with a stretch of some strong innings to break the shut out. Rice scored once in the fifth, twice in the sixth and had another run in the seventh to draw the game close late. However, the comeback effort came just a bit too late as they failed to tighten the game further in the seventh inning.
