Too little, too late.
A lackluster start put the Ruston High School baseball team in too be of an early hole to dig out of as the Bearcats fell 7-5 to Sterlington Monday night at the RHS Baseball Complex.
The Panthers scratched across the first run in the top of the first inning, but the Bearcats countered with a pair of runs in the bottom half of the stanza and then added another in the bottom of the second.
That gave Ruston a 3-1 lead — an advantage Bearcats would soon lose and never regain.
The wheels came off for the Bearcats in the top of the third as Sterlington pushed across five runs on six hits to push out to a 6-3 lead.
And that was something RHS coach Zack White didn’t want to see as his Bearcats head toward Thursday’s District 2-5A opener at West Monroe.
“I’m disappointed,” Smith admitted. “We haven’t been pitching well the last three ballgames. We’re about to start district play, so this isn’t the time of year we need things like that to happen. We didn’t pitch well and we didn’t hit until late. That’s not the way to win a ballgame.”
Two hit batters and a wild pitch allowed the Panthers to plate another run in the top of the fifth inning as Sterlington stretched its lead to 7-3.
“We’re just coming off a long tournament, so we didn’t have that many arms to throw for us tonight,” Smith said. “We knew we were going to throw Reid Williams a little bit from the bullpen because he’s got to come around and throw district later this week. But we just didn’t have many arms to throw tonight.”
Williams got that chance in the top of the sixth as he worked the final five outs of the contest, allowing two hits and no runs while striking out a pair of Panthers.
He then provided a little offense to lead off the bottom of the seventh inning, reaching base on a single.
Justin Symanski then singled to advance Williams and put two runners on base. Following a strikeout for the Bearcats’ first out of the inning, JR Tollett singled in Williams to cut the Sterlington lead to 7-4.
The Bearcats then took advantage of a wild pitch from the Panthers that allowed Symanski to score, but Ruston’s next two batters struck out to end hopes of a comeback win.
“I thought we didn’t quit, but you can’t wait until the last minute, the last inning, to try to jump up and score enough runs to come back and win,” Smith said. “It’s a seven-innning game, and you have to play hard all the way from the first through the seventh, and we didn’t do that. It’s disappointing.”
Now the 11-7 Bearcats will try to rebound and prepare for two games against West Monroe, which stands at 12-3 after defeating Neville 4-3 Monday evening.
The Bearcats and Rebels will play starting at 6 p.m. Thursday in West Monroe before facing off again at 1 p.m. Saturday at the RHS Baseball Complex.
“One game at a time,” Smith said. “We didn’t help ourselves momentum-wise, but it’s early. Hopefully we can get back to playing the kind of baseball we were playing earlier in March. We’ll get there. The first district game is like the start of a new season, and we need to get this thing back on track.”
