Plains-Hot Springs wins two of three

The Plains-Hot Springs girls softball team experienced mixed results in the three games they played this week, getting shutout against Florence and completing a doubleheader sweep of Eureka.

The team was unable to manufacture any runs against one of the top-rated softball teams in the Class B-C division and fell to the Lady Eagles 7-0 Friday afternoon at Florence.

Plains-Hot Springs, whose record is now improved to 6-5 after this week, still has growing to do according to assistant coach David Thompson.

“We’ve been playing pretty good and our kids are just young,” Thompson said. “We’ve been starting four freshman and we only have one senior on the club. The last couple of games, we’ve been doing pretty well. We just have not hit the ball really well.”

Thompson credited the level of competition his team faced and also attributed the loss to his team’s lack of experience against the powerhouse Lady Eagles club.

“Florence probably had one of the fastest pitchers that we’ve faced all season,” Thompson said. “We allowed seven runs but our girls are improving and getting more confident in doing their jobs. Our team is coming around pretty well, I think. Hopefully it keeps going that way.”

Thompson said his team was able to adapt to the pitcher but by the time they did, it was “too late.”

“We were able to finally get two hits off of her we just were never able to come around,” Thompson said. “Florence has been a strong softball program for a long time.”

Plains-Hot Springs sweeps Lady Lions

The Plains Hot-Springs team swept the Eureka Lady Lions in a series where the Trotters-Savage Heat manufactured a total of 37 runs.

After the loss to Florence, Thompson said the entire team, led by head coach Michele Hunter, had a discussion to help them regain their confidence.

“We talked about how Florence threw a pitcher with as good of speed and location that we’ve seen,” Thompson said. “The Eureka pitcher threw decently fast but we were more confident and started putting the ball in play a little bit. Eureka made some errors that cost them. If we can play like we did against them, we will be in good shape.”

In the second game, Plains-Hot Springs’ usual pitcher Jess Thompson didn’t pitch and Dakota Butcher made her pitching debut.

“Butcher had never pitched a high school game in her life and was a little slow getting started,” Thompson said of Butcher’s high school debut. “However, she pitched five innings and we had a 22-19 lead. Hunter put Jessica back in and we were able to hold them off in the last inning.”

This week, Plains will host Ronan in the earlier portion of the week and will play at Troy Friday. According to Thompson, these two games will be critical to win in a log-jammed Class B-C softball region.

“We need to do well against Ronan and Troy to stay up in the rankings and continue to build confidence in ourselves knowing that we can do this,” Thompson said. “This doubleheader will be a good test and so will the upcoming game against Mission-Charlo-Arlee. M-A-C had traditionally swung the bats well over the years. If they come up and swing, they can get on a roll and put some runs up on the board. You have to counteract that with good pitching and defense, and its anyone’s game.”

Thompson said he knows this part of the schedule is “important.”

“How we play at this portion of the schedule really sets up how we will be seeded headed into divisional tournament,” Thompson said. “It would give us a huge boost of confidence going in if we are able to get the No. 2 seed instead of the three or four seed. That confidence enables us to fix up some mistakes when we aren’t doing so well.”