Lady Tigers take field during pre-season tournament

The Mountain Home Lady Tigers open their 2011 softball season this weekend at the pre-season SIC Tourn-ament at Skyview.

Gone are eight of the 13 players that made up last year's state champion team that went 29-3 overall.

Mountain Home Lady Tiger softball coach Chris Asbury thought the quantity of this year's turnout for softball was down, but the quality was there.

"The turnout was down from what we typically like out, but we've got girls to field two teams and we really like what did come out. The talent level is definitely still there."

Coach Asbury fields a young varsity squad with four freshmen, four sophomores, three juniors and a senior, but thinks they will come along as the season progresses.

"We're young, but we're going to be in the hunt here for a few more years with the young talent that we do have, so we're real excited about that."

Madison Siefferman leads the five returners off last year's squad. The junior shortstop, in her third year on the varsity, hit .462 last year, driving in 22 runs and had nine doubles and four triples. She also led the team in walks last year with 19.

Krissy Elliott and Courtney Christiansen are the other two juniors returning from last year. Elliott batted .364 and Christiansen .359.

Rachel Warila is the lone senior on the squad. She hit .354 last year with eight doubles, a triple and 17 RBIs.

Sophomore Ashley Sessions came up off the JV team late in the season as a freshman and contributed. Despite being young, Coach Asbury believes his Lady Tigers will be in the thick of the conference race again this year.

"If people want to count the Tigers out, they've got something different to be thinking about here in the future, because we're going to be solid. I really think Skyview and Emmett, they both return quite a bit from last year. They were improving ball clubs at the end of the year and were very underclassman-loaded and I think this year they're ready to make a step, but don't count us out either."

Asbury sees this weekend's pre-season SIC tourney to be a good opportunity to get a look at the league.

"It'll be a very good barometer as to where we might stand. We open with Nampa to start, and then it'll depend upon how the bracket shakes out from there, but it's always good to get this non-conference stuff at the beginning of the year to see where we're at.

"We definitely have some holes to fill, that's for sure. They're getting their feet wet at the varsity level, which is always kind of a nerve-racking experience for them, too, so hopefully that serves to ease our minds a little bit going into conference."

The Lady Tigers will open the tourney at 4:30 p.m. Friday at Skyview against Nampa. They will have games at 10 a.m. and noon on Saturday.