Softball teams ready for postseason

Hornets play Friendly in first round; Braves, Raiders get byes

Friday, May 9, 2008

In the 3A South region, La Plata picked up the third seed in the region and thus will host sixth-seeded Chopticon in the second round. Both teams have first round byes.

Great Mills is the seventh seed and will have a home date against Friendly in the first round.

‘‘We need to get more hits than we have been [getting],” Great Mills coach O’Jay Lewis said.

Leonardtown is the fifth seed in the 4A East region and will visit Arundel in the quarterfinals after each team received a first round bye.

‘‘Three things: Pitching, hitting and defense,” said Leonardtown coach Glenn Larnerd, Jr., when asked what the Raiders need to do. ‘‘We need to limit our errors and take advantage of their errors, and we should be all right. When they say, ‘Play ball,’ we’ll see what happens. It should be interesting.”Ê

Also in the 4A East, Thomas Stone (15-2) is the second seed and received a first round bye. The Cougars will host the winner of the Glen Burnie-South River matchup in the second round.

‘‘We need to cut down on our errors like we made today [against Huntingtown],” Stone first-year coach Dave Reilly said ‘‘We made too many mistakes and it’s not very characteristic of us to make those kinds of mistakes.”

Lackey (6-10), which earned the ninth seed in the 3A South, will begin that portion of the bracket with an in-county battle at Westlake, who collected the eighth seed.

Chargers coach Dawn Cowger said it’s clear what her team must do in order to advance.

‘‘We have to hit the ball,” said Cowger, whose Chargers defeated Westlake 4-2 earlier this season. ‘‘That’s been our downfall so we’ve had to rely on our defense. We have a good defense, it’s our offense that’s struggling.”

Lackey’s biggest offensive output this season was a six-run effort in a win over McDonough.

‘‘It’s pretty frustrating because they hit the ball in practice, but then come game time, I don’t know if there’s different movement on the ball or what, but they struggle at the plate.”Ê

The winner of that game, which was trying to be scheduled for Thursday due to impending weather, will have the unenviable task of facing Huntingtown, the top-seeded team in the region.

After a thrilling run to the regional final last season, fourth-seeded Northern (11-6) will host Crossland, the fifth seed, in the quarterfinal round.

‘‘We need to be more disciplined at the plate and more consistent offensively,” said Northern coach Robert Radford, whose team has won nine of its last 11 games. ‘‘Our defense is fine, we just need to be more offensive-minded. It’s a discipline thing with quality at-bats and looking for the right pitch in the right situation and not being overly aggressive.”

Radford said he has no idea what kind of team Crossland is fielding this year.

‘‘All I know is that they’re from P.G. County and that they’re a five seed,” he said. ‘‘And that they’re coming to our place.”

In the 2A South region, the McDonough Rams collected the fourth seed and will host 13th-seeded River Hill in an opening round game.

Calvert earned the seventh seed and will invite 10th-seeded Oakland Mills down to Calvert County in a first round game. That game was scheduled for Thursday, too late to be included in this edition.

Patuxent garnered the eighth seed in the region and will entertain Marriott’s Ridge for the unenviable task of determining who will face the top seed in the region, Gwynn Park, in the quarterfinals.

Eleventh-seeded North Point will travel to sixth-seeded Mount Hebron in another first round matchup.