Lady Vandals drop Mineral County, earn top seed in playoffs

The dream season for the Eureka County High softball team continued last weekend when they defeated Mineral County in both games of a snow-shortened double-header, winning its 13th in a row in the process.

The Lady Vandals, (21-1, 15-1) haven’t lost in over a month when they fell 4-0 at Wells in their only blemish on their near perfect season. 

On Saturday, they struck the Lady Serpents early and often, and won the first game 18-1. Annette Hayward helped lead the way for the home team with two homeruns, three rbi and four runs scored. Junior Taylor Anderson had a long ball of her own and also finished with three rbi. Taylor Usry had four hits in the win, while Cassie Wells had three of her teams 17 knocks.

The Lady Vandals won the second game by forfeit after going up by 10 runs due to the cold and snowy weather. Temperatures were in the low 30’s all afternoon and the snow was starting to stick when the Mineral County coach said her team was not dressed to play in the conditions.

Eureka will now turn its attention to the bigger picture; winning a state title. That goal will begin Friday when they open up the Division IV Northern League softball tournament in Virginia City.

The Lady Vandals earned the top seed this weekend and will open up with host Virginia City (10-6) on Friday at 10 a.m. The two teams are quite familiar with each other as they recently played a pair of games on the Comstock earlier this month. Eureka won both by three runs, 9-6 and 6-3.

“Right now the girls are confident, hitting on all cylinders and are one team with one goal,” Eureka coach Mary Jane Hodson said. “They also know that they can’t take any team for granted, and have to start strong and stay strong and keep their heads in the game from start to finish.”

In the other matchup, two seeded Wells (12-2) will play Carlin (10-6), the third seed, at noon. The winners of both quarterfinal games will meet later that day at 4 p.m., while the losers will play an elimination game at 2 p.m. The championship game is set for noon on Saturday. The top two teams will advance to next weeks’ state tournament in Reno.

“I feel like our chances are very good to move on to state,” said Hodson. “I am really proud of this group of girls and how they have come together and are making every effort to work as a team.”