Jr. High Softball: Lady Warriors Struggle In Home Opener

</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[Barely 48 hours after a stellar season opening effort in the Marion Invitational Tournament, Du Quoin (Middle School) struggled in its home softball opener Monday afternoon on a wind-swept Lefty Pyle Field.

The Lady Warriors suffered a 4-1 setback against Benton (Middle School), falling to 3-2 on the young season. Du Quoin's next game is the Junior Southwestern Egytpian Conference (Jr. SWEC) opener at Chester Thursday.

"We just didn't get the job done today at all," DMS coach Jason James said. "The difference in the game was that Benton came up with the big two-out hits and we didn't. They scored three in the first with two outs. We had several opportunities and could not come through."

The lone DMS run scoed in the fourth inning when Chelsea Huff rapped an RBI single. Huff had two of the six DMS hits.

Aubrey Davis, Hailey Stewart, Abby Myers and Emily Asbury added base knocks.

Asbury (2-1) was the losing hurler, working six innings and allowing just four hits. She struck out two, walked two and gave two earned runs.

"We have to have a little more of that killer instinct when we are hittng," James said. "We have to stop hoping we are going to get a hit and know that we are going to get hits."

DMS-after a great first weekend-struggled defensively Monday and committed five errors."

Benton 4, DMS 1

Benton 003 001 0-4 4 0

DMS 000 100 0-1 6 5

LP-Asbury, 2-1. DMS Hitters: Green 0-4, Davis 1-3, Stewart 1-3, Whitley 0-3, Toler 0-3, Myers 1-2, Asbury 1-2, Huff 2-3 (RBI), Caldwell 0-2, Ferguson 0-1, Bastien 0-0.