ROY HESS | Staff Writer
BROWNSVILLE— Hitting home runs is becoming second nature for the Los Fresnos Lady Falcons in softball.
Their dinger total for the young season thus far is 24 after hitting 29 homers all of last year.
The Lady Falcons highlighted Saturday’s final game of the Brownsville ISD Invitational Tournament by sending four homers over the fence during a 12-2, five-inning victory against McAllen Memorial at Brownsville Sports Park.
The three-day, 40-team BISD Tournament ended Saturday with games at all six Brownsville high schools, plus five fields at BSP. Each team was guaranteed five games during the tournament, which had no championship contest, only round-robin play.
“We all started hitting from the beginning today,” said Los Fresnos pitcher/shortstop Victoria Perales, a senior who belted two homers over the fence against the Lady Mustangs and went the distance for her team’s pitching victory. “We started fast (at the plate) and kept going throughout the whole game.
“It felt good knowing my teammates came after me (with some additional hits after I had our second homer),” Perales added. “I felt like I pitched a pretty good game, and I had our defense behind me. We cleaned things up after the first inning (when we made two errors and gave up two runs).”
The Lady Falcons won four games and lost once in the tournament. They opened with a 13-1 loss to Mercedes on Thursday before defeating Edinburg Vela 7-2, Mission Veterans 16-1, La Joya High 11-1 and McAllen Memorial.
The Lady Falcons are now 12-6 on the season.
“I’m pleased with how we went in this tournament,” Los Fresnos coach Traci Blackman said. “We struggled in our first game against Mercedes, and after that we came out and did really well since then.
“We just have to keep fighting, keep everybody together (as a team) and keep everybody following the same process (of getting better), and we’ll be good to go,” Blackman added. “We have to work hard and work through the things that we’ve got to work through.”
Los Fresnos’ fast start Saturday included solo homers during the top of the first inning by Valerie Guevara and Perales for a 2-0 advantage. The bottom of the first was when a throwing error to third base that sailed high allowed the Lady Mustangs to score their two runs. That error followed a fielding miscue at second that put a runner on base.
A solo homer over the center-field fence to lead off the top of the fourth by Samantha Campos enabled Los Fresnos to go up for good, 3-2.
Then came a nine-run scoring outburst by the Lady Falcons during the top of the fifth, which soon ended the game via the 10-run rule. Highlighting the inning for Los Fresnos was a two-run homer over the center-field fence by Perales along with RBI doubles by Shivani Garcia and Reba Reyes.
In all, the Lady Falcons collected 13 hits compared to only one for the Lady Mustangs.
Guevara and Campos each batted 3-for-4, and Perales went 2-for-3. Five other Lady Falcons had one hit apiece.
Kayla Dow’s single in the bottom of the first was the only hit for the Lady Mustangs. Dow was also the one who took the pitching loss.
Perales finished with three strikeouts, no walks and one hit batsman to go with her one-hitter.
The senior pitcher said the goal for the Lady Falcons this season is getting back to the playoffs. Los Fresnos didn’t advance to the postseason last year.
“I think we have a good team this year and we can go pretty far,” she said. “We have a lot of skill. The chemistry is very good this season. We all work really well together, and we have a great bond.
“I think we have the ability to get to the playoffs with this team,” she added. “We can start fast and shut down (our opponent) from there.”
The Lady Falcons continue non-district action at home at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday against San Benito.