By George Mahl-Sports Editor

Its hard to believe the 2003 softball season came to an end for four River Parishes teams a little over a week ago.

The young woman and coaches had fought a long, hard battle to get to Sulphur. Riverside Academy, St. Charles Catholic, Hahnville and Lutcher played extremely well to get that far in the playoffs. However, for some of the players, such as SCC senior Heather Heltz, they will no longer have the opportunity to achieve the ultimate goal at the high school level.

One of the things I noticed during each of the games is how good the pitching was for the non-River Parishes teams.

In the St. Charles Catholic-Belle Chasse game, Heltz threw a good game by not allowing a hit through the first four innings. However, her counterpart threw an equally good game. She did not give up a hit through the first three innings and ended up pitching the whole game to get the victory. Kudos to both pitchers in what turned into a hard fought win for Belle Chasse.

In the Riverside – Vidalia game, I figured Lady Rebels starter Megan Warner would bring her ‘A’ game with her. I was right. Unfortuanlty for RA, Lady Vikings starting pitcher Miranda Doughty brought her ‘A+’ game with her.

With Riverside scoring 33 runs in their two playoff games before the trip to Sulphur, I , along with several of the Lady Rebels supporters, could not believe at how easy of a time Doughty was having with Riverside batters. She ended up striking out 14 in a 1-0 win.

Same story with Lutcher versus Teurlings Catholic. TCHS came in a with an amazing 28-1 record and simply frustrated Lady Bulldog hitters all game long. In fact, the Lady Bulldogs got only one hit the entire game.

A 5-0 shutout resulted in Teurlings advancing to eventually play Berwick in the final. Ironically, Berwick’s excellent pitching frustrated Teurlings, enabling them to claim the 3A title.

Finally, I think Hahnville played well against Lafayette, but ran into the same problem other teams faced: good pitching. It’s easy to see how well our local teams are during the season, but sometimes difficult to forecast as to how far they’ll go in the playoffs because of little knowledge of how much better the opposing team is. I guess it is safe to say when you get to that level it doesn’t matter what the record is because every team is good.