A pair of wins and four losses is where the Escalon High softball squad stands after a half dozen games.
Now, with school and extracurricular sports practices and games on hold through early April, the team is just hoping that they have a chance to get back on the field later this spring.
Action this past week saw the girls wrap up play in the Rainbow Fields Tournament, where they played two games on Saturday, March 7. They lost an 11-0 decision to Enochs and battled tough in a 6-5 loss to Modesto.
“We started our season with a tough loss against Sierra High School. Our second game against Calaveras was cancelled because they had girls in basketball playoffs so they didn’t have a complete team,” explained first year varsity head coach Kristin Beckman. “We faced Orestimba at Orestimba on March 2 and came out with a solid victory. We then went into the Rainbow Fields Tournament and battled our way through but came up short with three losses and one win on the weekend.”
Monday, March 9, the varsity girls went on the road to Linden and fell there by a lopsided decision.
“We had a rough rebound from the weekend and lost to Linden,” noted Beckman.
The varsity girls lost that game by a 15-2 final.
Escalon took a 2-0 lead at Linden in the Monday game, but the host team answered with five runs in the bottom of the first and didn’t allow any more Escalon runs the rest of the day. The host Lady Lions added three runs in the second and seven in the fourth to literally run away with the game, notching 15 runs and 13 hits. Escalon had two runs on four hits.
Then it was back to the home diamond for a game hosting Manteca on Wednesday, March 11.
“The girls came out looking to turn the season around but couldn’t quite do it in this game,” Beckman explained.
Manteca jumped in front, 3-0, in the first though Escalon trimmed the lead to 3-2 with a pair of runs in the bottom the second inning. Manteca answered back with a pair of runs in the third and added one more in the fourth to go up 6-2. A Lady Cougar rally in the bottom of the fourth saw a succession of hits that pushed three runs across the plate, getting them to within 6-5. The visiting Manteca team had an answer again, however, scoring two runs in the fifth, one each in the sixth and seventh innings. Fighting until the final strike, Escalon scored three more runs in the bottom of the seventh to cut the deficit, ultimately falling 10-8.
For the JV girls, the only score that has been reported from the week was a 14-9 loss at home to Manteca on Wednesday, March 11.
All sports, like school classes have been put on hold for the next few weeks due to the coronavirus.
“We have a very competitive team and are hoping that our season won’t end here,” said Beckman.
