Pirate Softball Season Opens At Mesquite Tournament

By GANNON HANEVOLD

Moapa Valley Progress

The Moapa Valley High School Softball season is officially underway. This year, it came at the Pirates faster than ever. Just a week after the Pirate girls basketball season ended, the team was rushed to get in enough scheduled practices to be eligible to play their first game at the Desert Winds Softball Tournament in Mesquite. Because of that, the Pirates’ season technically began with a scrimmage rather than a game.

On Thursday night, the Pirates took on Aquinas High School, a team traveling from San Bernardino, California. Aquinas has been a powerhouse in the Desert Winds Tournament for years. So the Pirates had a tough task ahead to win their first matchup.
Aquinas got the best of the Pirates from start to finish. The Moapa team couldn’t seem to get the offense rolling.

“They’re as good as any team we will see all year and it was our first game,” said Head Coach Matt Messer, “It was under the lights which is different for us as well. It was just a combination of things didn’t go our way.”

A day later, the Pirates took on the Elko Indians in an afternoon matchup. They hoped to bounce back from the unofficial loss to Aquinas. But in this first official game of the season, the Pirate offense struggled once again.

Defensively, the Pirates put on a better performance. Going into the final inning, Moapa Valley trailed just 2-0, but gave up a four run inning to the Indians to fall 6-0.
“It was closer than it felt but we couldn’t string anything together,” Messer said. “We played pretty good defense but a couple of hit batters and walks here and there got us.”

Later that evening, the Pirates were finally looking for their first official score of the season. It came in an avalanche. Moapa Valley took on the 2A’s Lincoln County Lynx and it was a comfortable performance from start to finish.

The Pirates were able to do whatever they pleased at the plate. They ran away with a 12-0 victory.

Sophomore Madi Fairchild was on the mound for Moapa, and pitched a remarkable one hit game.
“We just kind of started to get comfortable and the bats came alive,” explained Messer, “We talked about being more aggressive at the plate and they were aggressive from the beginning.”

That momentum carried into the Pirates’ final game of the weekend against one of the two Virgin Valley teams participating in the tournament. Moapa dominated the host school, jumping out to a 9-0 lead early and coasting their way to a 10-4 victory.

Upwards of six games this week and just two practices makes for yet another week of busy scheduling. Messer said the team focused on giving everyone an opportunity.
“We were able to give everybody some playing time and we wanted to rest some people because we have so many games this week,” said Messer.

Outside of rest, spreading the time evenly also gave the Pirates a chance to give experience to the many underclassmen filling new roles this season.
“The younger girls made some mistakes but they learned from all of them,” Messer said. “You could see the light bulbs start to go on.”

This week the Pirates take on Mojave at home on Wednesday. They then travel to St. George this weekend for another preseason tournament.