By JOHNNY PEPPO

Sports Editor

RESERVE – Riverside had a packed house Saturday afternoon for the Lady Rebels regional playoff game against Port Barre with softball fans traveling in all the way from St. Landry parish. It must have been a long ride home for those guys.

In a game full of offensive fireworks, the Riverside team came up with just enough runs to advance to the next round with a 6-5 win. But it was on defense where the Lady Rebels came through to get the victory. Ahead by a handful of runs going into the bottom of the seventh inning, the Lady Rebels watched their lead slowly diminish. It wasn’t until starting pitcher Kara St. Amant had worked her way through two outs that an infield pop-up put the victory in Riverside’s win column.

Though the teams and the fans were all in this one, with cheers and chants from in and around both dugouts, the game wasn’t an especially intense one until the final inning because the Lady Rebels seemed to have things in hand fairly early. To open the second they scored a pair of runs and added to the lead with two more in the third.

Port Barre showed they weren’t about to go down without a fight when they managed to get a runner on third with two outs. A single straight up the middle scored their first runner of the day. But with St. Amant on the mound, Riverside kept the Lady Red Devils in check, giving up just a couple of hits through the first three innings. That was long enough for the Lady Rebels to take a 4-1 lead after four innings.

But Port Barre put up a rally in the final innings (From page 11A)

that made this one quite the game. It finally went back well into Riverside’s favor in the top of the fifth when Marci Millet reached second base after a pop-up was dropped by the Red Devil defense and Lori Bourgeois notched a hit past the second baseman to score Millet.

The Lady Rebels advanced to the semi-finals round with the win. There, Riverside will battling the 10-2A champion John Curtis Lady Patriots and their ace pitcher Ashley Brignac. Last week, Curtis nearly suffered a major upset when they narrowly escaped in a game against Pine Prairie that went 11 innings before the Lady Patriots finally got the 3-2 victory. Riverside was swept during district play against Curtis, who won the Class 4A title last year. But the Lady Rebels will be returning to the semi-finals round as well after making it to the quarter-finals last year.

This year’s finals tournament is scheduled for Friday and Saturday in Sulpher. Riverside and Curtis will open play at 4 p.m. Friday.