Lady Tigers remain unbeaten in conference play

The Mountain Home Lady Tigers remained unbeaten in SIC 4A softball, beating Skyview and Bishop Kelly last week.

Mtn. Home 1

Skyview 0

The Lady Tigers hosted Skyview at Memmelaar Field in Mountain Home last Tuesday, and won a pitchers' duel, 1-0.

Charde Huntington singled in Blas Lord in the bottom of the third for the game's only run, as Mountain Home's Nickayla Skinner and Skyview's Stephanie Dyer were involved in a good pitching duel.

Mountain Home did get eight hits off Dyer, but could only produce the one run. That was enough, however. Skinner allowed just two hits as the Lady Tiger defense played a stellar game behind her.

"The girls made a lot of great defensive plays -- something we haven't done behind our pitchers frequently enough this year," said Lady Tiger softball coach Chris Asbury.

"I was very pleased with the defensive performance. At the plate, we did have eight hits -- kind of scattered them around -- left the bases loaded a couple of times, and just couldn't get that one hit to break the game open."

Charde Huntington and Madison Siefferman both had two hits, Huntington had an RBI. Jennica Quintal, Nickayla Skinner, Ashley Christiansen and Blas Lord also had hits. Skinner, who struck out five and walked two, improved to 8-1 on the season.

Lady Tigers 10

Bishop Kelly 0

Mountain Home took care of Bishop Kelly last Friday, beating the Lady Knights, 10-0, in five innings.

Nickayla Skinner pitched a one-hitter, striking out 10, and had a double and grand slam home run and drove in six runs in the win.

After blowing opportunities to score in both the first and second innings, the Lady Tigers got on the scoreboard in the third on Nickayla Skinners' two-run double.

They added five more runs in the fourth, four of them on Skinner's grand slam home run.

In the fifth, they scored three more without the benefit of a hit.

"A great win," said Coach Asbury in radio comments after the game.

"I'm a tough customer to please, however. We left a lot of runners in scoring position the first couple innings and didn't do a lot with that kind of tentative at bat, but I was impressed with our bunts tonight, we put down a couple nice sacrifice bunts, we beat out a couple of bunts and stole a few bases. We're accustomed to hitting RBIs a lot longer than eight feet, but we'll take them any way we can."

Nickayla Skinner and Jennica Quintal both had two hits for Mountain Home, Skinner had a double and home run and six RBIs, Quintal also had an RBI. Arlene Futch, Ashley Christiansen, Kelsie Hopkins and Blas Lord also had hits.

Nickayla Skinner improved to 9-1 on the season, striking out ten and allowing just one base hit.

The win improved the Lady Tigers to 10-4 overall, and 6-0 in conference play.

They hosted Emmett yesterday (Tuesday), and start the second time around their conference schedule tomorrow (Thursday) when they host Middleton at Memmelaar Field.