Ladycats fall in defensive battle against Midway

After reaching the state semifinals in each of the last two seasons, the Aledo Ladycats softball team looks to do that plus more in their last year of Class 5A competition. In their first home game of the season Tuesday night, the Ladycats hosted the Class 6A defending state champion Midway Lady Panthers in what turned into a pitchers’ duel between Aledo senior Lily Heckathorn and Midway junior Peyton Phillip. In the end, the Ladycats fell 3-0 despite strong efforts in the later innings.

“We need that exposure early, so whatever our weaknesses are, I want to see them early so that we can make adjustments,” Ladycats head coach Heather Myers said. “Once we got to our eighth batter, we knew what we were supposed to do in the box, and I feel like we saw progressive adjustments at the plate where they’re putting the ball in play and they (Midway) are the defending 6A champions – they are not bad – and that’s the pitcher that took them there last year. She’s legit and very well coached, but again, I saw growth in just a seven-inning ball game with our hitters. I can’t speak highly enough of how they made the adjustments, but it’s huge to face teams like that early, so we can see where we need to work and where we need to make adjustments.”

Midway was able to tag Aledo for two runs in the top of the first inning but managed just one run and three hits the rest of the way. The Ladycats had their best chance offensively in the fourth inning, where they loaded bases courtesy of a leadoff walk from Gigi Martinez and back-to-back singles from Rylee Marx and Kyleigh Pawlak. However, a foul out to right provided a sacrifice-fly attempt, but Aledo was tagged out at home on the play. With runners in scoring position and two outs, a strikeout swinging ended the scoring threat.

Heckathorn pitched all seven innings with seven strikeouts against six hits, two earned runs and one walk while Marx, Pawlak and Taloa each recorded a single.

Aledo will next compete in the Mansfield Tournament from Thursday through Saturday against strong foes such as Mansfield Legacy, Melissa, and Keller, which will provide the Ladycats with another opportunity to improve further against quality competition.

“We’ve got to play solid defense and we saw some really tight defense tonight,” Myers said. “Moving forward, being the caliber of team we are, we should play a clean 21 outs anyway. So that will be the number-one focus and then to stay disciplined in the box.”