Portales softball gets 10-seed

PORTALES — The Portales High softball team, coming off a third-place finish in District 4-4A, learned it would be the No. 10 seed in the Class 4A state softball tournament.

Portales (14-12) is slated to visit seventh-seeded Gallup in a noon Saturday first-round affair. The winner will face either Los Lunas or Kirtland Central in an 8:30 a.m. second-round game May 16 at Cleveland High School.

The Bengals (17-9) and Rams have not faced each other this season, and only have one mutual opponent in Hobbs. The teams both faced the Eagles in late March, with Gallup winning 17-6 and Portales losing 7-0.

Other than that, the Bengals are a mystery.

“Maybe I could ask other coaches around the state, but that’s about it,” Dodge said about scouting Gallup. “We’ve got to worry about ourselves and stay focused. We’re going to work on the same things we’ve been working on all year.”

The opening round includes 16 teams, with games played at the eight higher seeds. The teams that survive enter a double-elimination bracket which is entirely at Cleveland except for the 10 a.m. May 18 championship at the University of New Mexico.

Dodge figured Portales would get either the No. 9 or No. 10 seed entering Sunday’s selection. The No. 10 team gets to avoid top-seeded Artesia, but the Rams aren’t concerned about that.

“We’ve got to worry about this weekend first,” Dodge said. “I don’t think moving from a 9 to a 10 is that big, since you’re really going to have to face everybody in a double-elimination bracket.”

Junior pitcher Wendy Baeza isn’t fully recovered from a blister on her pitching hand, Dodge said, but the finger already looks better than it did on Friday night when Baeza allowed two runs and struck out 22 in a doubleheader sweep of Goddard.

Ram baseball falls short — The Rams probably needed at least two wins in their final District 4-4A series to have a reasonable shot to make the Class 4A baseball bracket.

Instead, Lovington was the one that took two of three, claiming a 5-1, 9-7 sweep on Saturday after the Rams took the Friday opener 5-4.

That put Portales at 10-15 overall, with a 1-8 mark in 4-4A. That record, the culmination of a young team and a handful of key injuries, combined with a contender field that expanded when the New Mexico Activites Association reduced classifications from six to five, kept the Rams out of the 16-team bracket.

The district had two of the bracket’s top three seeds, with Goddard second and Artesia third behind top seed St. Pius X. Lovington, which finished 8-17, was also left out of the bracket.