WESLACO — Weslaco High returned for its first post-spring break district contest on the diamond as one of the hottest high school softball teams throughout the Rio Grande Valley.
The Panthers carried all that momentum into Monday’s matchup against Brownsville Hanna and unloaded in their first trip to the plate.
Weslaco scored five times before Hanna had a chance to record an out during an offensively explosive first inning, which powered the Panthers to a 15-0 home win over the Golden Eagles in three innings.
“Being able to play as a team together like that was a really big win for us and so was getting our bats hot,” Weslaco center fielder Lexie Escamilla said.
“We wanted to go in there playing our best and keep our energy up,” Panthers left fielder Mia Rodriguez said. “That’s one thing we’ve really been focusing on as a team. … Keeping our energy up and working as a team, those have been the big things for us that this sport is all about.
The Panthers took advantage of back-to-back walks to begin the home half of the first inning and never looked back.
Weslaco reeled off three straight extra-base hits — back-to-back RBI doubles and a stand-up RBI triple off the right-field wall — to score the first five runs of the night in the blink of an eye.
Hanna allowed each of the Panthers’ first six batters of the ballgame to reach base safely before notching a strikeout to put an end to the rally.
That didn’t slow down Weslaco’s scalding-hot bats, though, when Escamilla drilled a deep line drive over the centerfield fence in the next at-bat. Her two-run home run, the first of the night, broke the game wide open.
“Lately I’ve been struggling, so I made sure if there was a pitch there, I took it and took advantage of it,” Escamilla said of her wall-scraping home run.
The Golden Eagles finally managed to escape after a nine-run first inning but were mostly unable to keep Weslaco off the basepaths.
The Panthers routinely capitalized on errors and walks to pad their lead, but inflicted most of their damage with a barrage of extra-base hits. Weslaco High clubbed several hard-hit, extra-base knocks, which included a triple and a pair of home runs.
The Panthers poured it on Hanna again during the bottom of the third, scoring six more runs capped off by an exclamation point three-run slam by Rodriguez to deep left field in the final at-bat of the night.
“I try not to think as much (when I’m at bat). I just go up to the plate and do what I know I can do,” Rodriguez said. “We were looking for line drives mostly more than trying to hit it over the fence. We were looking towards the fence to get doubles and extra-base hits.”
“Getting all those base hits moves runners over,” Escamilla said. “We just made sure to keep our energy up. Then we did what we did best and hit.”
Escamilla and Rodriguez tallied five RBIs between them in five combined plate appearances. In total, 10 Panthers scored at least one run as the bats were humming for the team up and down the order.
The victory also improved Weslaco High to 9-2 overall on the season and 4-2 in District 32-6A. The team has now won five of its last six games after stumbling in its district opener.
In that stretch, the Panthers have outscored their opponents 54-6, the largest scoring margin for any 32-6A squad during that time.
“We’re doing amazing right now,” Rodriguez said. “We’re really coming together and making sure we all have each other’s backs.”
Weslaco will hope to carry some of its momentum and timely hitting over to the East Valley for a pair of upcoming road games.
The Panthers will travel to Brownsville Rivera at 6:30 p.m. Friday to wrap up the first round of district competition and then head to Harlingen High at the same time Monday looking for revenge against the Cardinals after losing their district opener 4-1.
All three teams will be jockeying for playoff positioning amid a tight postseason race and wide-open district title chase.
“We’re going to try to carry what we did here over there and so forth (into Round 2 of district play),” Escamilla said.
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @ByAndyMcCulloch
