HARLINGEN — The Harlingen South Lady Hawks overcame a 9-1 deficient to defeat Brownsville Veterans 11-10 at Lady Hawks field Tuesday night in their District 32-6A opener.
“Its was a good offensive battle as far making sure we stayed in there and started hitting our pitches and being patient at the plate,” said Harlingen South head coach Debbie Esparza.
“I started off with two pitchers that I wanted to see if they could hang with this type of competition before I brought in our ace pitcher Mackenzie Wiley.
“Give them (Veterans) credit, those kids played hard all night long. Their shortstop had one error that started that run for us.”
Wiley entered the game at the top of the fourth and allowed just one run.
“Down 9-1, she came in and I told her ‘just do your job, your defense is behind you,’” said Esparza. “She’s our senior veteran player and this is what’s expected of her and this is what she needs to do.”
In the bottom of the sixth with Vets leading 10-4 and two runners on base, the Lady Hawks’ Ariel De La Fuente hit a low ball down the middle of the park that brought in Ashley Galvan for her fourth RBI of the game. The senior De La Fuente had already homered with her first at-bat in the second inning, putting the Lady Hawks on the scoreboard.
De la Fuentes’s RBI let the flood gates open as Harlingen South had a six-run sixth inning to level the score 10-10 heading into the seventh with freshman Kaitlynn De La Fuente getting the game-tying hit that allowed Jazmine Gallegos to come home.
It the seventh, the Lady Chargers threatened to get on the scoreboard when an error caused a runner to move to third base, however Wiley closed the inning without allowing a run.
With a two outs and 2-0 count (runners on second and third) Miranda Valdez stepped up to the plate and had the game winning RBI that brought in Ashley Reyna.
After the game Brownsville Veteran’s coach Ray Contreras has some words to say about the loss.
“Considering we have a young squad, for them to come out here and dominate a very good Harlingen South squad for six innings says a lot about us,” said Contreras. “I’m disappointed in the outcome of the game, but in the grand scheme of things it says a lot how successful we are going to be in the future.”
“At the end of the game I went a little conservative on the pitch calls and we gave them a little bit of life and that was all they needed.”