Sixteen games into the spring softball season, the Neosho County Panthers are 9-7 with two weeks left of non-conference play.
Facing No. 3 Des Moines Area on Tuesday, the Panthers got a valuable series split — DMACC won Game 1, 11-1, before taking Game 2, 10-2.
Neosho County were charged with more errors (4) than hits (3) in the Game 1 loss as 10 of Des Moines Area’s 11 runs were unearned.
“We need to keep working defensively and our bats didn’t come alive,” Neosho County interim head coach Mateighia Tanner said. “We were chasing their pitches and not our pitches.”
Game 2 saw the Panthers’ bats catch fire as they plated two runs in all five innings of the contest.
Brinly Bancroft and Favy Najar each hit a home run with Bancroft notching four RBIs.
Kamri Naff earned the win in the circle, allowing four hits and striking out six over a complete game effort.
“We flushed Game 1 and came back for Game 2,” Tanner said. “We put runs on the board. That was huge to have our pitchers’ backs. That lets them do what they do in the circle.”
While Neosho County is two games over .500, the Panthers have caught fire of late. Since the start of the month, Neosho County has won seven of its last nine games.
“We’re not peaking yet,” Tanner said. “We still have a lot of room to grow. DMACC was a great team to face. And we know what we need to work on. We’ll be ready to go when conference play starts.”
Up next
Neosho County hosts Kirkwood on Friday before travelling to Barton on Monday. KJCCC play for the Panthers starts on March 27 with a road trip to Independence.
“Defensively, we need to trust our gloves,” Tanner said. “We have a good defensive team. We just need to play free and trust ourselves. If we clean up some errors, we’ll be good. If we chase our pitches, we’ll keep putting the ball in play and passing the bat.”
