LOUISIANA, Mo. — The 2023 Louisiana Lady Dawgs softball season is heating up. The Bulldogs started off strong, lost a couple of games, and are now headed back to the top. The season started with a victory over Paris 4-0 and Palmyra 2-1. That winning streak was quickly shut down with a devastating loss to their longtime rivals, the Bowling Green Bobcats with a score of 2-12. The girls could not manage to defeat the Silex Owls and lost 0-11. Just two days later, they picked up a huge victory against Van-Far 16-1. The Lady Bulldogs attended the Elsberry Tournament. After fighting long and hard, they received second in the tournament. They came up short by just one run resulting in an upsetting loss in the championship game. Although they may have not come up on top, this was the farthest they have made it in the tournament in a long time. After the first few weeks of the season, the Bulldogs have some things to work on while also having a pretty good morale.

Since the season is just starting, Coach Kelsea Calvin is starting to get a feel of what they need to work on. “We’ve just gotta play as a team and just capitalize on little things. If something doesn’t go our way we can’t hang our heads, and we’ve just gotta pick each other up. That’s kind of been a mantra of ours from the beginning,” Calvin says. The Bulldogs did not lose any seniors last year so they are working with all returning girls and a good number of freshmen. A lot of the girls play travel ball or some type of softball league during the offseason, so the Bulldogs have that advantage there. The only problem is trying to get the team chemistry back so they can win. “A lot of these girls have played ball for a very long time, it’s just playing together. We haven’t always been able to play together like on the same team, we’re playing on different teams in the summer, so just trying to get that team cohesion back.”

It seems like the Lady Bulldogs have a promising future ahead of them and currently have a better season record than they have in years.