ADRIANNA BARRON (above) shook off an injury to her right hand, where a ball hit her in the fifth inning, during Game Two of Raymondville High School’s Bi-District series against Sinton in Falfurrias, Saturday. Barron was out for less than an inning. The final bell tolled on Raymondville High School’s varsity softball season after the Lady Bearkats were swept in two games by Sinton in the bidistrict round of the playoffs in Falfurrias late last week.

Raymondville lost both Game One (12-3) and Shortstop Lissette Esparza to an injury on Friday. Abigail Barnhart replaced Esparza.

Game Two, on Saturday, started out much better. The Lady Bearkats scored two runs in the first inning. A double by Monica Torres scored Frankie Rivas and a single by Isela Constante, which was dropped in left field, allowed Deborah Barnhart to touch home.

Errors, which plagued both teams, hurt Raymondville in the bottom of the first frame and Sinton took a 6-2 lead.

The Lady Bearkats almost erased Sinton’s advantage by scoring four runs in the third inning. Torres came in from third off of a single by Constante which hit the ground as two Sinton players collided at right field. Barnhart later came home through a double by Abby Cavazos. Constante scored on a double by Alexandra Munoz. Cavazos crossed home plate through a single by Oriana Flores.

Adrianna Barron showed some fortitude while enduring a little pain in the fourth inning. A hit ball smacked her right hand and the senior came out of the game for two-thirds of an inning. Deborah Barnhart stepped in and struck out one batter and got another one to ground out.

Barron hit a single in the top of the sixth inning which brought in Torres for a score.

Too many errors, though, allowed Sinton to collect more runs and the Lady Pirates closed the show in the bottom of the sixth inning.

“Offensively I think we did well today,” Head Coach Pete Soria said afterwards. “Defensively we missed one of our key players who was injured during Game One yesterday and we had young girls inserted and moved to positions they were not used to playing this season. We had to do a lot of rearrangement of the girls but we still played well and fought hard in my opinion.”

Soria is anticipating more than half of this season’s roster back next year.

“I am losing five seniors from this season and bringing back seven players so I have about sixty percent of my roster hopefully coming back next year,” Soria said. “The experience from those players who do come back will be tremendous for us next season.”

Raymondville, however, is losing two of its big guns.

“A couple of the harder hits is that I am losing both a great pitcher and an excellent catcher,” Soria said of Barnhart and Barron. “This tandem is going to be hard to replace.”

Soria added that Barron’s injury in the fourth inning was nothing big.

“Barron is good, what happened is that she tried to field the ball barehanded and it hit her in the thumb and sprained it,” Soria said.

The skipper concluded saying he was very proud of the come-frombehind performance his team pulled off this year.

“This season started off very rocky for us in the preseason where we lost a lot of games by one and two runs,” Soria said. “But the girls battled back, that is what the Lady Kats stand for. These girls knew how to win, took it to the next level during district where we knew our backs were against the wall and we bounced back.”