The Brownwood Lady Lions’ recent struggles on the diamond continued in their pre-district finale Friday night, falling to Abilene Cooper, 20-6, for their seventh loss in the last eight outings.

The Lady Lions (4-9-1) open District 6-4A action at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at Glen Rose eager for a fresh start.

“The girls have to get re-energized, get some confidence in themselves, and come out and know they can make plays in district,” said Lady Lions head coach Jessica Lynn. “District is like a new season and it doesn’t matter what we’ve done until now. We have to come ready to go and see what district holds for us.”

Brownwood led 1-0 after one inning, and the game was knotted at 1 through two frames. Cooper (13-5) then erupted for 19 runs in its final three trips to the plate.

“I thought we started off pretty good offensively and defensively, the first inning looked really good, but they got us back on our heels hitting it hard and we started making some mistakes and imploded a little bit,” Lynn said.

Offensively, the Lady Lions finished with nine hits – two each by Chesney Covey, Auzzlyn Benedict and Hailey Snell, and one apiece by Mia Lopez, Cecilia Rodriguez and Dakota Simpson.

“I thought we did a pretty good job of hitting,” Lynn said. “We came out aggressive the first few innings, we had some good hits, and I thought we were seeing the ball pretty good. We had some good at-bats where we worked some walks, saw a lot of pitches.”

In the first inning, Benedict doubled home Covey for the first run of the game.

Down six runs in the bottom of the third, the Lady Lions trimmed the deficit to 7-4 as Covey, who singled with two outs, came home when Lopez reached on an error. Following a single by Benedict, Rodriguez doubled home both Lopez and Benedict.

Brownwood tallied its final two runs in the fifth inning as Snell doubled home Lopez, who singled, and Rodriguez, who walked.

Along with its run in the second inning, Cooper scored six in the third, 10 in the fourth and three additional runs in the fifth inning.

Annie-Klein Allgood yielded 13 earned runs on 22 hits with a pair of walks and no strikeouts, and the Lady Lion defense committed three errors behind her.

“The good thing is we start district and it’s a 0-0 count because everything before that doesn’t matter,” Lynn said. “The girls get a mental break this weekend and we’ll come back Monday ready to hit it hard for district.”

Cecilia Rodriguez ripped a two-RBI double in the third inning of Brownwood’s game against Abilene Cooper Friday. [Photo by Derrick Stuckly]