MICHAEL KIRAL / L’Observateur / May 4, 1999

There was a sign in one of my high school classrooms that said something like, “If you shoot for the moon, even if you fail, you will still fall among the stars.”That saying certainly fits the Riverside and Lutcher softball teams that traveled to the state softball tournament in Alexandria this past weekend.

Both went to the tournament to win a state championship, and while both ultimately fell short of that goal, the Lady Rebels and the Lady Bulldogs can look back at that performances with pride.

Lutcher and Riverside both entered the tournament on the heals of very successful seasons. The Lady Bulldogs had won 25 games and had capturedthe District 10-2A championship. The Lady Rebels had recorded 25victories and had taken home the District 9-2A title.

Both teams were quite familiar with the state tournament. Riverside wasmaking its fourth straight trip to the tournament while Lutcher was playing in its fifth in six years. Both had played in the state championshipgame the year before with Lutcher taking home the Class 3A crown while Riverside fell to St. Charles Catholic in the Class 2A finals.Both were among the favorites to win it all this year. Lutcher wasreturning seven seniors while Riverside was bringing back five. Among thestarters both teams were returning were each team’s aces, Lutcher’s Erin Hymel and Riverside’s Tanya Teague.

Riverside started things off Friday morning in the Class 2A quarterfinals.

Teague, pitching in what would be her final game with the Lady Rebels, gave one of her finest performances, allowing just three hits while striking out 17. She would be matched by South Beauregard starter JadaGoins, also a senior, who held the Lady Rebels to three singles.

It eventually took a gutsy call by Lady K’s coach Jack Deason, sending Shayla Goins to third on a single by Candice Westbrook with Goins scoring on an errant throw, to break the deadlock in the bottom of the seventh.

Approximately three hours after the ending of that game, Lutcher’s Jenee Weber was lining the first pitch of the Lady Bulldogs’ Class 3A quarterfinal game against Abbeville into the right-center field gap for a triple. Weber came in to score on a bunt by Becky Lambert. Hymel madethat lead stand up, blanking the Ladycats on a one-hitter.

Hymel kept her shutout streak going against Kaplan the next day in the semifinals but was matched inning for inning by the Lady Pirates’ Lauren Trahan. If not for a controversial play at the plate, with Kaplan’s TaraMira scoring the game’s only run, those two teams could have played well into Saturday evening.

Only seven teams left Alexandria as state champions. But as Riverside andLutcher both proved, there were other winners as well.

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