in last weekend’s tourney

By STEVEN G. WATSON

Sports Editor

You can look at most junior varsity teams as farm leagues for future varsity squads, but the Charles Henderson JV are out to make a name for themselves.

The Lady Trojans, although winless on the season up until last weekend, came into the 2000 Trojan Classic junior varsity tournament and notched its first three wins of the season. Those three wins came against some tough opponents and helped the CHHS JV battle through the losers bracket to the championship game where they lost to a tough Hartselle team 10-2.

After losing to Enterprise 3-4 in their first action of last weekend the team pulled off a 5-3 win over Escambia County, a 16-5 whipping of Opelika and a surprise 4-3 turnaround against the same Enterprise team to get to the championship.

CHHS varsity assistant coach and junior varsity head coach Ronnie Baker said the accomplishment of his girls is even bigger when you compare their ages with those they were matched up against.

"We really haven’t played our age group this season," Baker said. "We are usually going up against 10th graders and above while everyone on our team is either in the ninth grade or under.

"These girls have worked really hard since January and have learned a lot about the sport of softball," he continued. "The main thing is for them to get better and better so they will be ready for that jump to varsity when the time comes."

Natalie Patterson was 2-for-2 in the second game against Enterprise and Chelsei Ward hit the game winning triple in the fifth inning that scored Andrea Ellis to put the Lady Trojans up for good.

Freshman Rachel Spurlin and eighth grader Brittany Carlisle do most of the pitching for the squad with seventh grader Allie Park getting in to pitch all five innings against Opelika during the tournament.

"We feel we did extremely well in the tournament and this team pulled together in the end to get as far as they did," Baker said. "To get those first three wins was important."