District tournaments have arrived for Class A teams
The high school fast-pitch softball playoffs have arrived for three local teams in Class A — the Gore Lady Pirates, Gans Lady Grizzlies and Webbers Falls Lady Warriors.
The high school fast-pitch softball playoffs have arrived for three local teams in Class A — the Gore Lady Pirates, Gans Lady Grizzlies and Webbers Falls Lady Warriors.
Gore began its district tournament Tuesday afternoon with a road doubleheader against the Dewar Lady Dragons. If one team sweeps the other, the winner advances to next week’s regional tournament, while the loser will see its season end.
If a winner-take-all game is needed, it likely will be played this afternoon.
Gans will travel to Red Oak for its bestof- 3 district tournament. There will be a twinbill at 3:30 p.m. Thursday, with the rubber game taking place Friday. The district champion will survive to make next week’s regional tournament, while the season will come to a close for the loser.
Webbers Falls will join Empire at Weleetka on Thursday for their Class A District Tournament, which will be played in one day. Webbers Falls and Weleetka will play at 10 a.m., with the loser playing Empire at noon. The Webbers Falls-Weleetka winner will play Empire at 2 p.m. The district tournament title game will be at 4 p.m., with the ifgame at 6 p.m.
The other five local teams won’t begin their regionals (the new name for bidistrict tournaments) until next week.
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Before I go into the individual hitting and pitching highlights of last week, I thought I’d briefly touch on another hot diamond topic — the Major League Baseball playoff chase.
Half of the divisions have been clinched — the National League East by Atlanta, the NL West by the Los Angeles Dodgers and the American League Central by Minnesota.
The other three divisions have dogfights in store. Entering Tuesday, Baltimore entered Tuesday with a 2.5 game lead over Tampa Bay in the AL East, while Houston has a 1.5-game lead on both Texas and Seattle in the AL West.
The Milwaukee Brewers are about to wrap up the NL Central as they took a six-game lead over both the Chicago Cubs and Cincinnati heading into action Tuesday.
The NL and AL wild-card races may be even more exciting.
In the NL, the top three wild-card teams as of Tuesday morning were Philadelphia, Arizona and the Cubs. The Cubs and Cincinnati actually are tied, but the Cubs own the tiebreaker.
Miami is one-half game out of the third slot, with San Francisco two games back and San Diego and the New York Mets clinging on for dear life at 5.5 and eight games back of the final spot, respectively.
The AL wild card is basically down to four teams vying for three spots — which currently are owned by Tampa Bay, Toronto and Seattle, which is tied with Texas but the Mariners have the tiebreaker over the Rangers.
It ought to be an exciting week and a half to the 2023 MLB season.
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WEEK 6 INDIVIDUAL HITTING HIGHLIGHTS
• Vian’s Hanna Mattingly went 15-for-19 last week with six doubles, a home run, 10 runs batted in and 12 runs scored.
WEEK 6 INDIVIDUAL PITCHING HIGHLIGHTS
• Vian’s Kala Gibbins had 30 strikeouts last week, including 11 in Thursday’s home win over Gore.
• Roland’s Emily Daws fanned 14 batters last week, with a game-high nine last Wednesday against Okmulgee.
David Seeley is sports editor for Your TIMES. He can be reached by telephone at (918) 775-4433, ext. 139 or by email at davids@cookson.news.
