JA Lady Raider Softball was scheduled to play their second conference game of the season against MRA on Monday, but heavy rains made the playing surface unusable. Unfortunately for JA, the game was moved to Wednesday. Struggling to connect with their bats and having difficulty on defense, JA had one of their least impressive outings of the year after the first couple of innings and for the first time this season, was unable to put a run on the board.
The Lady Raiders allowed just one run through the first two innings and looked to be playing defense well, getting 3 straight outs in the second inning. For offense in the first, JA had two hits that were fly outs and was also caught stealing home on a very close play at the plate. In the 2nd inning, the JA offense had a runner on first from a base on balls, but had 3 straight strike outs and never moved the runner. Those initial stumbles proved to be hard to overcome.
MRA’s short stop led off the 3rd inning by knocking a solo home run over the centerfield fence, and a series of fielding errors along with a couple of more hits put five more runs on the board, giving MRA a 7-0 lead going into the bottom of the 3rd. The Lady Raiders could not answer MRA’s big inning, though, logging three straight strike outs. JA’s contact rate was nonexistent tonight and did not record a hit. They were able to reach base on a couple of hard ground balls that were mishandled, but could not convert those to runs in the last inning. Some additional hitting by MRA and defensive errors by JA in the last two innings allowed MRA to tack on 3 more runs. Jackson Academy fell to MRA by a score of 10-0.
