A late comeback allowed the Southside Mavericks to punch their ticket into next week’s 7A State Tournament.

Trailing 4-0 going into the fifth inning in Tuesday’s game at Little Rock Central, Southside took over momentum. The Mavs tied it up with four in the fifth, and then posted another crooked number an inning later with five runs as they went on to a 9-4 win.


“I think that the first half of the game, we kind of started out a little bit slow, but they really came on in that second half,” Southside coach Cassy Story said. “We were able to put some hits together; Piper Morgan did a great job for us getting a couple of really big hits when we needed them and I think they all kind of came together at the end and got the win that we needed.”

Morgan ended up going 3-for-4 with two RBIs, including an RBI double in the sixth that gave Southside its first lead of the day, 5-4.

Now that the Mavs (3-10 7A-Central) are assured of going to state, the next order of business will be to determine their seeding.

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Southside will play at home against Northside on Friday, and the winner gets the No. 5 seed from the 7A-Central at the 7A State Tournament in Fayetteville, while the loser ends up as the No. 6 seed. Northside stands in fifth place at 4-9 in the conference, one game ahead of Southside.

When the two city rivals last squared off, the Lady Bears got the win as pitcher Sydney Green tossed a one-hit shutout.

“If we can just carry over the momentum that we had in the last few innings on Tuesday, the goal is to carry that over into the game on Friday,” Story said. “I think they were hitting the ball really well, playing pretty solid defense, we moved people around and I think they’re finally starting to feel comfortable in their positions.”
