St. George plays host to "Spring Warm Up 2010" for intermountain area high schools

Hundreds of girls from all over the intermountain west converged on St. George last weekend March 12-13th to play softball. The tournament got off the ground running on 7 fields Friday afternoon. Play continued through the evening with the final games slated for a 10 p.m. start. Play resumed Saturday morning at 9:00 am but, unfortunately, mother nature had the final word and all games after 1:00 p.m. Saturday were rained out. West Jordan opened play Friday with a tough matchup against a good Palo Verde High School squad out of Las Vegas, Nevada. Melissa McCormick fanned 11 batters (23 strikeouts in her first 2 games) in nailing down a 4-2 victory over the Jaguars. The Jags were scheduled to play again at 5:30 against Roy High School out of Roy, UT and showed up with Brea Buckley on the bump for the Jags and McCauley Flint throwing the pill for the Royals. Flint threw a gem as she allowed only a single to Ashleigh Lamoreaux in the 4th inning in what was otherwise a hitless game for the Jaguars. She struck out 8 in 5 innings and picked up a 5-0 shutout allowing 4 walks and remaining strong through all 83 pitches thrown. Although the Royals were awarded 3 unearned runs by a tight Jaguar defense they also hit the ball well off of Buckley knocking out 7 hits along the way including a 2 run homerun by none other than McCauley Flint who had 2 RBI’s as well as a walk and 2 runs scored along with leadoff batter Jordyn Barrera who also went 2-2 with 2 runs scored. Bree Ordiway was assigned the start bright and early Saturday morning at 9:00 a.m. and got off to a bit of a rough start allowing 3 hits and 2 runs in the top of the first inning to the Lions of Payson, UT. It would be the only 2 runs she would give up. Ordiway looked good throwing 5 strikeouts in a solid 6 innings of work allowing only 2 more hits the rest of the way. The Jaguar offense again struggled early. Lamoreaux laced a 4th inning solo Homerun to give the Jags their first hit of the game and put them on the board before the Jag bats woke up in the 5th inning with hits by Becky Ballard and Chelsea Bills who picked up 2 stolen bases on the trip around the bags, scoring another run and tying it at 2 after 5 innings. The Jaguars half of the 6th saw the clock run out for Payson after a run scoring double by Ordiway as well as an RBI single by Lindsay Drake to cap off the scoring at 4-2 as the game time expired. When the lady Jaguars came back for their 12:30 contest against Silverado Ranch High school out of Las Vegas they seemed to have come ready to get the bats going. Before the game was called in the bottom of the 3rd inning due to rain, the Jags pushed across 3 runs with Ballard going 2-2 with 2 runs scored. Lamoreaux knocked in a run with a double while Marky Ashton and Buckley each picked up run scoring singles. Ordiway looked good for the 2+ innings of work she got in and unofficially had 2 strikeouts and allowed just one single to A Kosinski of Silverado. After waiting almost 2 hours through the rain and snow the officials decided that safety was the best idea and decided to suspend play for the remaining games closing out a weekend that saw the Lady Jaguars go 1-2 with 1 incomplete game and brought their overall record to 2-2 while at the same time getting a chance to get the winter rust off and get some valuable early season experience under their belts. The team plays 3 road games this week on Tuesday at Brighton, Thursday at Granger, and Friday at Alta.