EARLY – The Early Lady Horns made the most of 18 walks by Bangs Lady Dragons pitchers, and batted around twice in a 14-run third inning en route to a 21-4 victory Monday afternoon in the District 8-3A softball opener for both teams.

Early (10-3-1, 1-0) – fresh off five wins and a tie at the Llano tournament over the weekend – continued its stellar play.

“We’re on a pretty good roll,” said Early head coach Alfonso Chavez. “I’ve got a lot of young players that are starting to play some really good ball. We came into today and our main goal today was being patient at the plate, and being patient was a big thing today.”

Leading 1-0 after two innings as Gwen Phillips walked and later scored on a wild pitch during Aubrey Greaves’ at-bat in the bottom of the second, the Lady Horns sent 18 batters to the plate in the third, using seven walks and eight hits to produce 14 runs.

Early’s third inning featured three straight singles from Grace LaRue, Jordyn McIntire and Trinity Torrez to load the bases with no outs. Alexa Portillo followed with a bases-loaded RBI walk. Then, with one out and the bases still full, Kyndal Staggs, Greaves, Madison Torrez, Kailee Love, and LaRue walked in succession to plate runs ahead of a two-RBI single by McIntire. Trinity Torrez followed with an RBI ground-out, then Portillo tripled ahead of an RBI single by Phillips. Staggs singled and Greaves walked to again fill the sacks, then Madison Torrez followed with a three-RBI triple.

“We wanted to come in and play a little small ball and be patient and then let our girls that are our main hitters get some hits and that’s what happened today,” Chavez said.

Bangs (0-1 in district) pushed across its first two runs in the top of the fourth as Jacee Miller led off with an infield single and scored on a two-out RBI double by Kylie Salazar. Avery Bierra then plated Salazar with another RBI double.

In the bottom of the fourth, Early added six more runs as a dozen batters stepped to the plate during the inning.

LaRue walked, McIntire reached on an error and Trinity Torrez bunted her way aboard to again load the bases with no outs. Portillo picked up an RBI on a bases-loaded and with one out, Staggs, Greaves and Madison Torrez did the same. With two outs, LaRue plated a run on an RBI walk and McIntire knocked in the final run by reaching on a two-out Bangs error.

The Lady Dragons added two more runs in the top of the fifth before the game ended due to the 10-run mercy rule.

Hadley King reached on an error and scored on Miller’s RBI single, while Marissa Perez walked and later came home on a bases-loaded free pass to Salazar.

LaRue finished with five strikeouts and three walks in the circle.

“The first four innings were good, but she was in the dugout a little bit too long and it’s hard to get back out there and get your momentum back,” Chavez said. “But she did really good,. We’re not giving up a lot of runs right now and as long as we keep that up we’ll be OK. We still need to work on defense, though.”

Recently Chavez passed 300 wins in his coaching career, with more than a third coming with the Lady Horns.

“It means the world to me,” Chavez said of the milestone. “I have over 100 wins with these girls here in Early and I hope to retire from here. We want to keep this rolling and I think we have something really good that we’re working on.”

The Lady Horns will travel to Comanche at noon Wednesday while the Lady Dragons will host Dublin at the same time.