It’s the sign of a good team when the statistics aren’t quite satisfying enough, and these are the statistics: five runs in the first inning, a resounding 17 hits in the game, and a cake-walk, sweet-tasting, 11-1 softball conquest of Ingram, March 28. Geez, if THIS were disappointing, you wonder what the Warrior folks were thinking.

“We started well-enough,” head coach Brian Cottle said, “but then we relaxed and lost focus, and you cannot do that until the game is over and the field is taken care of.”

Cottle’s contingent did indeed take care of the basics with its first eight batters in the first inning. Katie Yeager followed a walk to Chelsea Montgomery and a single by Jordana Miiller with a run-scoring base hit.

A throwing error on the play brought in courtesy runner, Brittany Williams. Kelsie Simpson, who was the hero in her previous at-bat three days earlier against Wimberley, drilled a single to right centerfield, and Yeager crossed the plate. Another error produced the fourth run, and the doubles’ dynamo, Emily Schendel, would launch a bullet to left to make it, 5-0.

Schendel would get a second two-bagger later for her fourth such extra-base blast in two games.

There were still no outs, but two more singles by Chelsea Pike and Cierra Thompson were wasted (my, aren’t we greedy?), and the cameraman pushed the slow-motion button. Llano got no more runs in the first and failed to add to its lead through the fourth inning.

“I’m pleased with the final result,” Montgomery disclosed, but admitted, “this should have been pure domination; there should have been no question at all that we would continue to play the whole game the way we started, but that didn’t happen.”

Cottle’s lament: “We didn’t do our job for too long a time after the five-run first; we didn’t hit, we weren’t in the game. The girls know what they have to do to win--if they lose it, they have to get it back; they can’t wait till I scream at ‘em to get it back.”

Yeager must have been thinking, “Hey, is anyone paying any attention to the pitcher?” The sophomore right hander used her first pitch of the night to hit the batter, but she then retired the next 14 Warriors in a row.

She wound up allowing one run on two hits, and she struck out five in five innings in the circle. Workmanlike. No, solid.

Rejoining the maligned offense, the Jackets said, “Watch this.” They put together five hits and scored four times in the fifth stanza. Miiller hit a rip double down the line in left, and Schendel got her second double with a monster shot to the fence in left.

Lauryn Looney, the senior who battles to make a contribution, got her second hit of a three-hit night in the inning.

“I had to relax more at the plate, and I did,” Looney revealed. “I’m feeling more confident; I know I can hit the ball.” Montgomery, a young woman of many words sometimes, had just one about Looney: “Awesome.”

Miiller, the stellar third-baseman-turned-catcher, closed out the proceedings with a two-run double in the sixth inning. She matched Schendel’s double-double, had three hits in the game, and Llano owned a 10-run, mercy-rule advantage.

Extra innings: Leslie Weihs was on base three times (two hits and a walk), so she has reached safely 10 times in 11 at-bats in three district games. Montgomery had two walks and a single; Pike had two hits, while Thompson hit the hardest ball of the night, but unfortunately, the scorching line drive dented the shortstop’s glove and stuck there.

The coach’s closing argment: “We need to keep getting better each week, and we need to peak when we play Wimberley. It’s important we’ve won three district games in a row, but it would have been more important for us to have played well in all three games.”