After frustrating season, Lady Tigers head to district

The Mountain Home Lady Tigers headed into this week's District III 4A Softball Tournament hoping to turn things around from a frustrating regular season.

The Lady Tigers' woes continued last week, with road losses at Kuna and Middleton.

Kuna 9, Mountain Home 1

A six-run fifth inning by Kuna broke open a close game Tuesday as the Lady Kavemen downed Mountain Home 9-1 in conference softball.

Kuna pushed across a run in the first inning. Mountain Home tied the score at 1-1 with a run in the top of the fourth, as Maegan Pomerantz singled in Taylor Reed, who had reached base on an error. Kuna scored two runs in the bottom of the fourth, then broke it open with six runs in the fifth. Mountain Home managed just one hit off Kuna's Nicole Arizana, who struck out 10 batters.

"We've got to give credit to Nicole (Arizana). She pitched a good game," said Lady Tigers coach Ron Nicolosi. "I just don't think we were as mentally sharp as we could have been."

Heather Adams suffered the loss to drop to 4-12 on the season.

Middleton 14, Mountain Home 8

Mountain Home spotted Middleton eight runs before finally getting on the scoreboard, and it proved to be too big of a deficit to overcome Wednesday, as they lost to the Lady Vikings 14-8.

"We battled them for sure," said Coach Nicolosi after the game. "Unfortunately, again, we got caught with our mistakes, and then you give Middleton credit because they had some key hits when we did make a mistake, but the girls battled back.

"We got eight runs on them, and I tell you what, we hit the ball so much better today than we did yesterday, so that's a big positive. We'll take that into our workout tomorrow and the weekend and make it work against Bishop Kelly (on) Monday."

Maeghan Pomerantz had three hits for Mountain Home and drove in one run. C.J. Bish had two hits and an RBI. Taylor Reed, Kelly Elliott and Kira Baker also had hits. Elliott and Baker both scored two runs.

Madi Karst suffered the loss.

Mountain Home went into this week's District III 4A Softball Tournament as the number eight seed, opening Monday at Bishop Kelly against the top-seeded Lady Knights. The district tourney was played at the higher seeds on Monday and Tuesday, and goes to Kuna today (Wednesday and Thursday for its final two days. The top three teams from the tourney advance to next week's state tournament in Post Falls.