Lady Tigers softball team's loss streak extends to four

The Mountain Home Lady Tigers continued to struggle putting runs on the board last week, getting blanked by Columbia and Kuna in conference softball.

The Lady Tigers had their April 23 game at Bishop Kelly postponed due to a lightning storm.

Columbia 10, Mountain Home 0

(five innings)

The Lady Tigers appeared a bit flat last Wednesday as they lost to Columbia in a 10-0 shutout at Memmelaar Field in Mountain Home.

Mountain Home managed just two hits off Columbia's Mallory Dardis, who struck out eight in the five-inning contest. Those two hits came in the fourth, when Brittney Karst and Courtney Christiansen had back-to-back singles to lead off the inning. However, Dardis got two straight strikeouts and a pop up to get out of the inning. Heather Adams gave up just three earned runs but suffered the loss to drop to 7-8 on the season.

Lady Tigers softball coach Chris Asbury thought his girls came out flat.

"We're just searching for answers at this point of the year," he said. "It'd be different if we lacked a lot of these skills to compete, but we don't. We're a good ball club. We'll get it together and bounce back, and we better do it in a quick fashion."

Kuna 7, Mountain Home 0

Mountain Home managed five hits off Kuna's Nicole Arizana on Friday but could not put enough of them together to score any runs as the Lady Tigers were blanked, 0-7 by the visiting Lady Kavemen at Memmelaar Field.

Madi Karst battled Nicole Arizana tough for three innings before Kuna scored two runs in the fourth and three in the fifth. Kuna scored single runs in the sixth and seventh innings off Heather Adams.

"We played solid defensively, and we pitched well, but Kuna was able to string together some two or three extra-base hits when they needed to," Coach Asbury said after the game. "We couldn't overcome that and push any runs across the plate ourselves."

Krissy Elliott, Brittney Karst, Courtney Christian-sen, Teresa Fredell and Taylor Reed all had hits for Mountain Home.

The Lady Tigers fell to 4-9 in conference and 7-12 on the season. They close out their regular season schedule this week. They were at Bishop Kelly on Monday and home for Senior Night on Tuesday before their regular season finale at Emmett today, May 2.

"Three very tough games," Coach Asbury said of this week's games. "They are going to be very big tests for us, but if we come out of there playing well, regardless of wins and losses, I like our chances in the district tournament."

The District III 4A Softball Tourney runs from Monday to May 10.