Brown happy with strides made in rebuilding season

By Dave Maxwell

Wells started off early and just kept on going in their game at Eureka last Saturday. Then the Leopards put nine runs on the board in the fifth inning to take a 17-1 win over the Lady Vandals.

Wells and Mineral County along with Whittell and Coleville will be the 1A Northern Division tournament today and Saturday at Smith Valley. Eureka played their final game of the season Tuesday this week at Carlin.

Eureka not making the playoffs this year breaks a six year run. The last time they missed out was 2011.

Wells put three runs up on the board in both the first and second innings, two more in the third and lead 8-0 before Eureka got an RBI from Shauna Brown to score Jenesis Dominguez, their only run.

Coach Briana Brown said the Vandals did play good defense, “did extremely well out in the outfield. I used all my pitchers to get everybody some work and they all did well.” Offensively, however, Brown said the Lady Vandals bats were “just slow,” only getting four hits.

Looking at the season as a whole Brown said this was a building year for the girls, “but we did what we wanted to do, to progress, to get better every game, and we accomplished that. From here on out it’s just going to get stronger.” Heather Lacavara was the only senior on the team, so the future is bright Brown believes. “Every player learned something new throughout the season,” she said. “I can’t say enough about my freshmen. They stepped up and really played hard and did well as did the whole team overall.”

Brown said the attitude of her girls, even in the shadows of a losing season has been, “It’s exciting, let’s play.”

That in a way echoes the thoughts of the great sportswriter of the 1920s, Grantland Rice, who once wrote, “When the One Great Scorer comes to mark against your name, He writes not that you won or lost, but how you played the game.”