Published: 08:46 PM, Fri Apr 27, 2012
Prep baseball, softball, soccer tournaments begin Monday
By Earl Vaughan Jr.
Scholastic sports editor
The Mid-South 4-A Conference will decide tournament winners in baseball, softball and girls' soccer beginning Monday.
All three conference tournaments will have first-round action Monday with top seeds Terry Sanford in baseball, South View in softball and Terry Sanford in girls' soccer getting first-round byes.
Semifinal play in each will be Tuesday with all games at the home field of the regular season champions.
The soccer and baseball finals will be Thursday with the softball final on Friday.
While Terry Sanford baseball coach Sam Guy and South View softball coach Kellie Aldridge are happy to be top-seeded, both aren't fans of the semifinal schedule that will have their respective teams playing the 5 p.m. game Tuesday.
"That's going to take us out of our routine playing at 5 p.m.,'' Aldridge said. "I think we'll be fine because we'll still be in our dugout and all we'll have to do is bump everything up two hours earlier.''
Guy said the argument for playing the first game is it gives the top seed more rest before the finals, but he doesn't see an advantage.
"It's only two hours,'' he said. "The guy that pitches on Tuesday isn't going to pitch on Thursday. I would think it would make more sense to have the No. 1 seed playing in the night game.''
C.J. Komons, Terry Sanford girls' soccer coach, is most concerned about his team's mental state. "Our last three games of the season have been pretty tough,'' he said. "We ended the regular season 0-2-1. Bouncing back from that is going to be a challenge.''
Jack Britt soccer coach Natt Bunphithak is most concerned about his opponents in the conference tournament being too familiar with his team. The Buccaneers finished second in the standings to Terry Sanford.
"It's hard to play teams a third time,'' Bunphithak said. "We've got to come up with a new game plan because they've seen us twice already. We need to change stuff up.''
All three of the top-seeded teams in the tournament are guaranteed No. 1 berths in the upcoming state 4-A playoffs. Only teams seeded No. 3 or lower can improve their post-season standing. Any team seeded third or lower that wins one of the tournaments would move up to the No. 2 seed and knock everyone else in the conference down a notch for the state playoffs.
Scholastic sports editor Earl Vaughan Jr. can be reached at vaughane@fayobserver.com or 486-3519.