BY NATE KOTISSO | STAFF WRITER
Edinburg High and Weslaco East took very different paths to a play-in game set for Monday night.
The Bobcats were tabbed as a preseason contender to win the new-look District 31-6A, though they had a much different look to them.
Amber Reyes, The Monitor’s 2017 All-Area Player of the Year, was off to Texas A&M-Kingsville. Power hitter and Lehigh University commit Katy Truitt transferred as did Shayla Garcia, who was a freshman catcher in 2018. Truitt is at Corpus Christi Flour Bluff. The Hornets won their first district title in school history on Thursday night. Garcia is a sophomore on a San Antonio Warren team that won District 28-6A.
To make matters tougher, Edinburg High lost ace pitcher Erika Cortez, The Monitor’s 2018 All-Area Player of the Year, to Rio Hondo just games into this season.
Somehow, EHS (7-15, 5-7) is getting ready for its fourth-place game against Weslaco East that didn’t seem possible.
“It’s been a tough season for us. We didn’t expect to be in this situation,” Edinburg High coach Ramon Arciba said. “We had high hopes, but now we’re in a position where we can control our own destiny. The girls have continued to fight through adversity. They show up to practice, day in and day out. As soon as these things happened, we couldn’t dwell on them. They were very big parts of our team, but we’ve had some youth step up where we’ve needed them throughout the season.”
Weslaco East (16-17, 5-7) has dealt with a rash of injuries and position changes.
“We’ve had three season-ending injuries on our roster,” Weslaco East coach Victoria Vasquez said. “We’ve had to make adjustments early in the season, midseason and now at the end of the season. What we’re asking the girls to do is trust us. We need them to trust that we’re putting them in the best position to help us win. They’ve done a great job so far. We had a great game against Edinburg North (a 2-1 ENHS win in 12 innings April 9). Hopefully, it’ll work for us again.”
It’s difficult to gauge what to expect from the Bobcats and Wildcats. EHS and WEHS split the season series with each team defeating the other by 10 runs in both meetings.
Weslaco East will host the winner-take-all game at 7 p.m. Monday in Weslaco.
“We watch a lot of film and have a lot of scouting reports on them,” Vasquez said. “We need to eliminate a lot of errors on our side. We give up a lot of unearned runs. We need to take care of our pitcher in the circle.”
“We’re just going to let it all hang out on Monday,” Arciba said. “We’re going to throw everything at them. The mentality we have is that we have nothing to lose. I have no doubt that our girls will rise to the occasion.”