The Manhattan High Softball team started the season off with a win last Tuesday in McPherson against Great Bend 5-4 but fell to Andover 8-12 later that night.

“It was their first games of actually playing together this year,” head coach Connie Miller said. “They just kept the pressure on and they just kept fighting, especially in the loss. They didn’t let the deficit get them down. They didn’t quit, they kept playing and kept trying to produce runs and so that was probably the most encouraging thing that I saw was their willingness to keep playing even when they were behind.”

In the first game against Great Bend the Tribe was up the whole game, and going into the seventh and last inning, they were up 5-1. Though Great Bend scored three to put the Indians lead to 5-4, the Indians pulled out the victory in the end.

“Our defense was clean throughout the whole game,” sophomore Ellie Hacker said. “We were hitting the ball like we’ve practiced, especially the bottom of the lineup which really helped.”

In the second game versus Andover, it was a different story. The Tribe was down 1-9 at the end of the second inning. As coach Miller stated the Indians didn’t go down without a fight. The Tribe would soon only be down 8-10 by the end of the six but went into the last inning down 8-12. MHS just couldn’t get anything going from there and would later fall in their second game of the season.

“Creating offense is probably the biggest thing that [we still need to work on],” Miller said. “I would say we’re going to continue to focus on that and put a lot of effort into and moving runners once we get them on base to put them in a position where we can score.”

The Indians softball team will travel to face off with Junction City next week on Friday, Apr. 5, before their home opener the following week on Tuesday, Apr. 9, against Rossville at 4 p.m.

“[The team] just needs time together,” Miller said. “We hope that they find their niche and start to kind of gel and play together as more and more games go along. They want to be aggressive and they do have a goal to qualify for state and make it to the state tournament. That’s something we haven’t done in many years and I think that’s probably their primary focusing goal for this year.”