Lady Blackhawks take third place in tourney

Wednesday, April 19, 2017

SILOAM SPRINGS -- The Pea Ridge Lady Blackhawks got tripped up in the semifinals of the Siloam Springs Lady Panther Invitational on Saturday, but the Lady Blackhawks ended a long day of softball on a winning note.

Pea Ridge answered an early Siloam Springs scoring threat with four runs in the bottom of the first inning, and that was enough to carry the Lady Blackhawks to a 6-2 victory in four innings in the third-place game of the tournament, which wrapped up Saturday afternoon at La-Z-Boy Park.

Pea Ridge, which played all three of its tournament games on Saturday, finished the tournament 2-1 overall.

The Lady Blackhawks postponed their first-round game with Hackett, originally scheduled on March 10, to Saturday because of bad weather and because their boys basketball team in the Class 4A State Finals that same weekend.

So the Lady Blackhawks and Lady Hornets played at 8:30 a.m. Saturday with Pea Ridge winning handily 14-2.

That set up a semifinal game with Fayetteville, and the Lady Bulldogs upset Pea Ridge 4-3 in four innings. All tournament games were played with a 70-minute time limit.

The loss to Fayetteville sent the Lady Blackhawks to the third-place game against Siloam Springs, which had lost 7-6 in eight innings to eventual tournament champion Gentry earlier in the afternoon.

"Coming into the weekend, playing in a late season tournament, our two goals, and the girls know this, were to obviously win the tournament -- we're not just showing up to play -- and keep improving for postseason," said Pea Ridge coach Josh Reynolds. "I feel like the way we played game one and game three, we were able to do that."

Lady Blackhawks starting pitcher Dominique Burwell, who pitched in game one against Hackett, surrendered a pair of early runs to Siloam Springs, but threw two scoreless innings to close out the 6-2 victory.

"Dominque threw early this morning in game one, and we asked her to come back and throw in game three for us," Reynolds said. "She had a long day, but she did very well. She attacked the strike zone. Made them put the ball in play, and we made the routine plays behind her."

The Lady Panthers got on the board in the top of the first when Kenlie Noel doubles and came around to score on a Pea Ridge error to take a 1-0 lead.

The Lady Blackhawks answered with four in the bottom of the first.

Hollyn Davis walked and Whatley doubled, followed back-to-back walks by Quinley Roses and Alli Whatley.

That forced Siloam Springs to switch pitchers as freshman Rachel Mann gave way to senior Crissa Spry, who threw all eight innings in the previous game against Gentry.

Brittany Harmon drove in a run with a groundout to short, and Halley Laster smacked a two-run single up the middle to score two runs.

Spry got out of the inning with the Lady Panthers down 4-1.

Siloam Springs pulled a run back in the top of the second. Maranda Guntharp walked and Sydney Smith and Danielle Boyster hit back to back singles to load the bases. Mann then hit a single up the middle to score Guntharp to make it 4-2.

The Lady Panthers had the bases loaded and nobody out with the top of their order coming up, but Spry popped out, Noel reached on a fielder's choice with an out being recorded at the plate, and Hannah Evans struck out to end the inning.

"Pea Ridge is as good as almost anybody in our league," Siloam Springs head coach Scott Wright said. "We had the bases loaded there and only scored one run. Had we gotten a couple more runs and had a big hit there, we were really only one big hit away from being toe-to-toe with them. Even 6-2, that's not a big-time loss. We just missed a couple of opportunities on offense that may have made a difference for us."

Pea Ridge answered that run with two runs in the bottom of the second. Bailey Johnson opened the inning with a single, moved to second on a wild pitch and scored on an RBI single by Davis.

Davis later came around to score on a wild pitch to make it 6-2.

Pea Ridge improved to 20-3 overall with the win over the Lady Panthers, while Siloam Springs dropped to 3-14 overall.

"I thought overall we played a lot better today," Wright said. "I thought there were some really good things that we did out there today. I thought we showed a lot of improvement in some areas. We've just got to make sure we stay consistent with that. Obviously we just need to keep getting better, learn to handle those pressure moments. The more you get in those, the better you get at them and get used to it. We've got some young ones out there that are getting better, and we're starting to see some progress."

Sports on 04/19/2017