Lady Panthers fall short in scrimmage against Crawford County

ROBERTA, Ga. — The 2023-2024 softball season is here…almost.

The Perry High School Lady Panthers got an early start against the Crawford County Lady Eagles on Thursday, but couldn’t get over the hump and lost 5-4.

Though losing isn’t the preferred outcome, the results aren’t nearly as important in scrimmages as they are in the regular season and in the playoffs, according to head coach Daniel Wood.

“Honestly I think it finds the areas of weakness,” he said. “[Like] areas of execution where you get girls on third base, you have no outs and find ways to get her in.”

That was one downfall of the Lady Panthers Thursday.

After a four-run first inning the bats struggled, and even when they did manage to get on base there were a couple of innings that left runners stranded in scoring position.

“[We needed to] just scratch our way back into the game: One run here, two runs there. After that first inning, our bats got cold,” Wood said on some things they needed to do during the game. “We had a lot of weak contact, so [we have to] learn how to square up balls more. Knowing when girls are on base, how we need to move them over either with bunts or hitting them over. So just not getting content with those four runs but wanting to put four more up every inning.”

As mentioned before there were several times where the Lady Panthers had runners in scoring position, particularly in the fourth inning.

Chloe Davey singled past third base and managed to steal both second and third base, but she was left stranded after the next two batters each hit a pop up to the catcher.

It was base running like Davey’s that put the Lady Panthers in a position to make the comeback, and scrimmages are a perfect place to work on that.

“Working on base running and game-like speed because in practice we can only simulate so much,” Wood said. “When you put a live pitcher out there it speeds the game up a lot. Finding ways to execute the small parts of the game. The big parts are going to come, but just learning how to do the small parts of it.”

The Lady Panthers will have another scrimmage next week against the Houston County Lady Bears.

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