By Jeremy McDonald
Jeremymcdonald73@gmail.com
MEDFORD, Ore.– It was just that one inning, in two games for the Dallas softball team that kept them from a 4-0 trip down in Medford on Monday and Tuesday. But that’s why the Dragons come to Medford, for that competition and to see where they can improve.
Despite graduating a good amount of their 5A State Semi-Finalist team from a year ago,they do return Ava Woods, Madi Ruman and Ruby Halligan to anchor the young squad and found themselves going 2-2 in Medford and are currently 3-3 on the year.
“A lot of the team is new, so a lot of the younger kids struggle with their confidence because they’re new to the Varsity-level…so us showing them, leading by example or talking. Like telling them, ‘hey, you got it’ is going to help a lot, especially in the upcoming years because they’re going to be our starters the next two, three years,” said Ruman. “I feel like we did pretty well, we just had one inning in the two games that we lost that we weren’t playing to the levels that we’re held up.
“We have the ability. We work our butts in practice, we know how to fill our position. We just need to clean up that one inning because we should’ve had those two other games.”
Ruman takes over the pitching circle from Kadance Morrison and has pitched sparingly in the past. Ruman knows how big of the shoes she has to fill from Morrison entering this year.
“It’s definitely big shoes to fill, but I’m confident in my team’s ability to back me up, so I think as long as we trust each other , we’ll be pretty successful this year,” said Ruman.
After falling to Sherwood 2-1 Tuesday, a game in which Ruman struck out five, Dallas rebounded with a 10-0 victory over Franklin to close out the Medford trip. Woods drove in three runs to lead the Dallas offense in the game with Maeve Woolsey and Riley Rozar driving in two each. Ruman and Harlow Nelson each led the Dallas offense with two hits each in the game against Sherwood.
Dallas will host Central Catholic on April 3 at 5pm.
