Errors Doom Lady Cats in Series Opener with South Grand Prairie

ABILENE, TX—The Central Lady Cats fell to South Grand Prairie in the first game of their best-of-three playoff series at Wells Field at Abilene Christian University on Friday.

Freshman pitcher Ashton McMillan and the Lady Cats allowed Warrior left fielder Elisa Cantu to get all the way over to third with one out in the top of the first inning. Cantu would be stranded there thanks to a pair of strikeouts from McMillan.

The Lady Cats jumped out to an early 1-0 lead when McMillan laced a ball into right field to score Kaleigh Ochinang in the bottom of the first inning.

McMillan finished as the only Lady Cat with a multi-hit game from her 2-for-4, RBI performance on Friday.

South Grand Prairie and the Lady Cats would trade scoreless second innings before the floodgates opened to the tune of a five run third inning for the Warriors. Eleven batters came up in that inning for South Grand Prairie.

McMillan walked two batters and the Lady Cats committed a couple of errors to compound the problem in the inning.

Midway through the game strike calls started becoming balls and balls started becoming strike calls, baffling the inexperienced Lady Cats.

“I think [the strike zone] changed midway through the game,” said Central head coach David Millsap, “but I will never blame a game on an umpire. It’s not their [fault]. First off, I used to be one, so I know they’re human and they make mistakes. Whether I agree or disagree, it is what it is. What we preach to our girls is being able to adjust. If [the umpire] is erratic, then we’ve got to be ready to go.

From there on out it was all South Grand Prairie, as the Warriors would plate two runs in the fourth, three runs in the fifth to give them their 10-1 winning margin.

McMillan went just three innings where she allowed five runs on three hits with six strikeouts and four walks.

Bailee Fulps came on for four innings of relief of McMillan. Fulps went four innings for Central where she allowed five runs on five hits with three strikeouts.

“Both of them when they have trouble, I think they have trouble snapping out of it,” Millsap said. “I think we didn’t get a lot of help strike zone-wise, but we tell the girls we have to adapt, and we’re going to adjust and just keep battling.”

The Lady Cats struggled at the plate, going 1-for-8 with runners in scoring position.

“That’s real tough,” Millsap said, “and I think that contributes to the struggles in the circle. We did not play good defense behind either, especially behind Ashton. That’s not characteristic of us. We’ll make an error here and there, but we won’t string them together.”

The struggles were made worse by phenomenal pitching by South Grand Prairie’s Natalie Castillo, who went the distance and struck out 11 Lady Cats in the game.

The Lady Cats (0-1) and South Grand Prairie (1-0) will meet at Wells Field at 10 a.m. on Saturday. If South Grand Prairie wins, the series will be over. The Lady Cats need two wins on Saturday to advance past the Bi-District round.