By T. Scott Boatright
When neighbors play neighbors, the game often simply seems bigger.
Sometimes so big it can get away from you.
The Ruston Lady Bearcats softball team learned that earlier this week as they fell to Lincoln Parish foe Simsboro, 6-5.
And on Thursday night it was the Choudrant Lady Aggies facing a tough lesson as they fell 11-1 in six innings in another cross-parish battle against Ruston on the Lady Bearcats Softball Field at the Ruston Sports Complex.
It was simply one of those nights — the bad kind — for Choudrant after Ruston started strong to race away with its second win of the season to move to 2-1 on the year.
Uncontested stolen bases along with numerous wild pitches and errors proved costly for the Lady Aggies, who just couldn’t get into any kind of groove from start to finish.
That was uncharacteristic for a 1-2 Choudrant team that had defeated Ouachita 8-6 last week.
“We’ve had some adversity this week with some injuries and things like that and it all just caught up to us tonight,” said Choudrant coach Stacey Tassin. “We’re a much better team than we showed tonight.
“Right now we’ve just got to focus on getting ourselves together mentally and getting back on track. Regrouping and overcoming adversity is top priority right now.”
Choudrant managed one hit in the top of the opening inning on a double by Zoey Smith before the Lady Bearcats jumped on top 2-0 in the bottom half of the stanza.
Ruston leadoff batter Aubrey Stoehr doubled to spark Ruston’s offense before being plated on an RBI-double by pitcher Rilee Atwood, who went on to score herself on a Morgan Foster groundout.
The Lady Bearcats pushed across two more runs in the third as Atwood led off the bottom half of that inning with a walk before Tolar singled.
Foster then hit a two-RBI single to push Ruston’s lead to 4-0.
Choudrant scored its lone run in the top of the fourth as Emma Boggs tripled before scoring off a Kylie Willis single.
But Ruston added three runs off of four hits in the bottom half of the stanza as Gracelyn Underwood and Stoehr hit back-to-back singles before Atwood singled in Underwood and Sage Toler notched an RBI to score Stoehr.
Jaiden Feeheely then singled to plate Atwood and extend Ruston’s lead to 7-1 heading into the fifth inning.
The Lady Bearcats scored three more runs in the final two innings, with a ball dropped on what should have been a routine tagout accounting for the final RHS run that gave Ruston the 10-run rule win with one out in the bottom of the sixth inning.
“I thought tonight was good,” Ruston Head Coach Lauren Garvie said. “We were lucky in getting time to sit down and watch some film from earlier in the week and just seeing small adjustments that need to be made and the girls went after that tonight. Stoehr and Rilee started us off hot and then I think they carried that through really well. We really pitched really well tonight and our freshman Skylar Bowers came in and did a great job for two innings.
“The girls worked hard. Feeheley was doing everything she can to knock down and over throw even though we had plenty of room in the score at the time. I’m very proud of how we played tonight.”
Foster batted 3-of-4 for the Lady Bearcats, with a team-leading four RBI’s and a triple. Stoehr and Tolar added two hits each.
Smith and Willis led the Lady Aggies with two hits each.
Next up for Ruston will be a home game against D’Arbonne Woods on Monday while Choudrant is slated to play host to Ouachita today.
