TORRINGTOM: Okay, so that week didn’t go as planned for the Torrington softball team.
When Spring vacation week began, the Raiders had a tough stretch of games upcoming, starting with a visit to take on rival Naugatuck on Monday.
That game and day worked out very nicely thank you, in a 6-1 win to improve their record to 5-1 on the year and one would figure the team had to be feeling pretty good about themselves.
From there though, the bottom fell out the next two times out, culminating in a 14-0 mercy rule loss to an Oxford team that simply seems to get off the bus hitting.
In between, on Wednesday, Torrington managed just two hits in an 8-0 loss to Watertown.
So, after a week of great promise, the Raiders find themselves at 5-3 as we head towards the halfway point on the spring season.
End of the world stuff?
By no means.
A bad two game stretch does not mean the Raiders have lost their swagger; they just need to relocate it for their next bundle of games this coming week starting on Monday when they host Ansonia (2-5).
On Wednesday, the Raiders take a trip to Waterbury to face WCA before coming back home on Friday to take on the Warriors (8-1) in a rematch.
Everyone in the Naugatuck Valley League is chasing Woodland (10-0) who had to rally from down four against Naugatuck on Friday afternoon.
Those four runs the Greyhounds plated are the only runs the Hawks have allowed so far, outscoring their opponents by a 142-4. Ouch.
For Torrington, what went wrong and what do they need to do to steady the ship?
Head coach Sara Arburr weighed in.
“Against Watertown, we really struggled to make contact with the ball,” Arburr said. “Today, even though we didn’t string many hits together, we were making contact. So, for us, that’s progress. “
Getting back to their winning ways will require a short memory and a return to the basics.
“We just need to worry about really focusing on pitch by pitch, out by out and inning by inning,” Arburr said. “I thought we did a better job on thattoday, but their bats were just too strong.”
The visitors would score a pair of runs in the first and second before putting things away with a 10-run fourth that featured nine hits.
Anything Oxford hit seemed to find a hole or a gap.
The good news?
Hey, the Raiders get to come out and play softball again on Monday and the score will be 0-0 as they take the field in search of their next winning streak.
Short memories help.