By OAKLEE FIELDER, Sports Editor
Last week, the softball team had five home games to play. Three against the Ouachita Baptist University Tigers. Two against the SWOSU Bulldogs.
They barely avoided being swept by the Tigers, only winning one of their three games, although they dominated in that game. They lost both games against the Bulldogs.
Chloe Brown opened up the first game against the Tigers, she was replaced at the start of the third inning by Madelyn Cason. The two teams opened up scoring immediately.
The Tigers scored three in the first inning, the Lady Rangers two in the bottom.. Ouachita scored one run in the third, fourth, and fifth innings to extend their lead.
They finished off Northwestern in the top of the seventh as they scored three in the top and had a seven-run lead.
Katheryn Jones was on the mound the entire game for the Lady Rangers in the second game of the series. The Lady Rangers scored two runs in the bottom of the first, giving a little bit of foreshadowing for what is to come in the game.
The second and third innings were scoreless. In the fourth, the Tigers scored one run. In the bottom half, NWOSU scored seven runs, with a triple homerun by Avery Clark. As it was the second game in a day, it ended in the fifth inning.
The Lady Rangers put the Tigers down in hopes to keep momentum rolling for the next day.
In the third and final game of the series against Ouachita Baptist, Jones started on the mound and played the whole game.
The first three innings were scoreless. In the fourth, the Tigers scored two runs. The rest of the game went by with no runs scored.
The Tigers had defeated the Lady Rangers in two out of the three games in the series and gave the Lady Rangers their 32nd loss of the year.
Moving onto the Bulldogs, Jones started on the mound once again. Cason relieved her in the sixth inning.
The first inning went to the Bulldogs as they scored the first run of the game. In the second, they scored another run.
The Lady Rangers responded with four runs in the bottom of the second. The next two innings were scoreless as NWOSU seemed to slow down a bit.
The Bulldogs scored three runs in the top of the fifth and took the lead by one. They scored in the final inning and won the game by two.
Cason started on the mound to begin the final game of the week. She was relieved by Chloe Brown in the first. Jones went to the mound for Brown in the third, Cason went back to the mound in the top of the sixth to finish out the game.
SWOSU scored two runs to open the game. NWOSU responded and scored one run in the bottom and one in the second. The Bulldogs then scored three in the third. The fourth and fifth were scoreless.
The Bulldogs scored three more in the top of the sixth. The Lady Rangers made an attempt and scored a run in the bottom of the seventh, but it was not enough.
The Lady Rangers sit at 13-34 overall and 12th out of 12 teams in the GAC standings.
There is not a way for NWOSU to make the playoffs.