By Thomas Sellers Jr.
The Brighton Lady Cardinals were a tough way to start the 2021 season.
After the Millington Lady Trojans were defeated 10-0 by the Class 3A power on Opening Day, Millington bounced back with a 14-6 victory over Bartlett. Then it was time for the Lady Trojans to head over to the Natural State taking on Paragould, Wynne and Pocahontas. In three competitive games, the teams from Arkansas were victorious by a combined scored of 17-9.
All those tough games prepared Millington for March 24 to open the District 15-2A schedule against the Fayette-Ware Lady Wildcats. The Lady Trojans started the league schedule with a win beating Fayette-Ware 15-0 in four innings at the Lady Trojan Softball Field.
“They’re small steps but they’re good steps,” Millington Head Coach Diego Reyes said. “This is what we talked about, game right here we have to play to our level. Get up there, get the hits we need to get, play the defense we need to play. It’s like practice but it means something because it prepares us against the good teams.”
The Lady Trojans jumped out 5-0 in the first inning. Millington added another 5 runs in the second inning starting with a Erica Wright triple off the top of the wall driving in Abbie Gallo.
The Lady Trojans went ahead 7-0 when a pass ball allowed Wright to score. Millington’s next batter Daphne Fowler reached on two-base error. Fowler crossed home plate when Ally Marona found the green grass with a single.
With Millington ahead 9-0, Lady Trojan Rilee Ervin put a ball into play leading to a four-base error and her scoring to make the tally 10-0.
The Lady Trojans added 4 runs in the third inning highlighted by a Fowler triple to make the score 12-0. The game ended in the fourth inning when Wright drove in the final run of the night with a base hit scoring Chloe Muston.
Now the Lady Trojans prepare for another tough stretch of games playing Arlington, Munford and rematches with Brighton and Fayette-Ware.
“It’s been a four game span that we’ve played and we’ve played some good competition,” Reyes said of late March. “One of the things we’ve taken away from it we are a good team. We can play with these teams. We proved it against Collierville.
“We put 8 runs up on Collierville,” he concluded. “Although they put up 14, we know we can play against these teams. It’s that one inning. That one inning that puts us benign and we just can’t climb up. We’ll get the couple of runs later but it’s not enough. We know we’re a good team now and we have to do it each inning.”
