Chix split series in Border Wars in holiday tourney

Chix split series in Border Wars in holiday tourney

The Arkansas Chix Elite won three games this past weekend at the Border Wars tournament in West Memphis while picking up looks from college coaches in the process

sports@theeveningtimes.com

The Arkansas Chix Elite split six games this past weekend at the Border Wars Tournament at Marion Rose Park in West Memphis, going 3-3 over the Labor Day weekend.

The Chix defeated Fireballs Xtreme in their opening game of the weekend 5-1 before falling to Arkansas Platinum 4-2 and closing out Saturday by rebounding against Wicked and earning a 9-7 victory.

Sunday, the Chix got off to a rough start, dropping a game to the Tipton Thunder 12-2.

“We had a meltdown,” Chix head coach Randy Fingegan said. “We went into the bottom of the first inning in the first game down seven runs off of errors.”

However, the Chix bounced back against Platinum with a 4-0 win before losing a 6-5 game to Wicked in the Chix’s finale on Sunday.

Playing with only 10 girls all weekend, Finegan is pleased with the effort his team showed despite their lack of players.

“Overall, we did real well,” Finegan said. “We were short a couple of key players… We were short staffed but all in all they did well.”

Though Finegan says the Chix didn’t hit the ball as well as he would’ve liked to have seen them bat, Haley Cook ended the weekend on an emphatic note, smashing a three-run homerun against Wicked in the Chix final game of the weekend.

However, the excitement of Cook’s weekend had not ended as the Marion Lady Patriots player also verbally committed to play softball for Southwest Tennessee Community College.

The next Lady Patriot to commit to a collegiate program could be Blakeleigh Garrison, according to Finegan.

“Blakeleigh Garrison got some looks as well,” Finegan said. “Some college coaches wanted to speak to her after the games. So, it’s going to happen for her. Just where, nobody knows yet.”

Getting high school players into colleges is the main goal of the Chix team, according to Finegan, who has one more tournament in Benton this weekend before playing strictly against college teams for the rest of the fall.

“That’s what the goal is, to get them four years of education anywhere they can,” Finegan said.

The Chix began the college exposure portion of their schedule on September 17th as the team travels to Southwest Tennessee Community College for a doubleheader.

By Collins Peeples