After seeing their first game of the season against Hillcrest on Tuesday postponed, the W.S. Neal Lady Eagle softball team opened their season Thursday on the road against Jay and took a 12-2 loss to start the season 0-1.
In the loss, the Lady Eagles were held to only two runs in the fourth inning while surrendering four runs to Jay in the second, seven in the fourth inning and one in the fifth to take the 10-run mercy rule loss.
W.S. Neal had four hits in the loss had made seven errors while Jay had 13 hits and committed one error in the loss.
“We knew this was going to be a tough game for us to start the season,” W.S. Neal head coach Jeff Haney said. “I also think it was a great measuring stick for our team. Jay is a quality program and they are already a couple of weeks into their season. This game really showed us some things we have to improve on but I’m not disappointed in the way we played. The mistakes we made are correctable and these girls will work hard to correct them. I thought we did a good job with the bats. The bats were a problem for us last year, but I thought we put the bat on the ball well against quality pitching tonight. We will take what we learned in this game and continue to improve this weekend in Thomasville.”
At the plate for the Lady Eagles in the loss, Kaeli Brown and KeKe Floyd had a double each while Adria Barnett and Tiffany Sawyer had a single each. Sawyer had two RBIs for the Lady Eagles of East Brewton.
In the circle, Haleigh Dubose took the pitching loss. Dubose went four innings and allowed 13 hits, allowed five earned runs, walked five and struck out two.
W.S. Neal was scheduled to play in the Lady Tiger Classic Saturday in Thomasville and will be back in action Tuesday at home against Excel. Game time is set for 4:30 p.m. for the varsity game and the JV game will be played at 6 p.m.