Thus far, the month of July hasn’t been kind to the El Dorado Oilers.
Having lost four straight, the Oilers will try to turn their fortunes around at the American Legion AAA Senior State Tournament, which gets underway Friday in Conway.
The Oilers (11-12) will take on Batesville at 6 p.m. at Curtis Walker Field with either a winner’s bracket game or an elimination game to follow on Saturday against Mountain Home or Maumelle, who will meet at 8 p.m. following the Oilers’ contest.
The double-elimination tournament is being staged over two weekends with eight of the 16 teams in the field looking to extend their seasons for another week.
“Batesville has a very competitive team from what I’ve been told,” said Oilers coach Greg Harrison. “It’s definitely going to be a good challenge for us in the first round. We’re definitely excited about the opportunity to face a team that we would normally not see during the regular season. We’ll give it our best.”
The Oilers enter the postseason having not played since they were swept in a doubleheader at Arkadelphia eight days ago. The Oilers were slated to play a doubleheader against Sheridan on Monday, but it was called off due to rain. Although the Oilers were unable to get any games in, Harrison and his team have spent this week working diligently on getting everything shored up for the state tournament.
“We’ve had practices that’s helped us fine-tune some of the things that we really needed to work on to get ready for the tournament,” Harrison said.
The Oilers got off to a hot start by winning five of their first eight games, but have struggled since, although four of their losses over the past month have been by one run.
“We hit the ball strong to start the year, but we haven’t been hitting the ball as strong lately, and that’s one of the things that we’ve worked on,” Harrison said. “One of the things that’s really been an obstacle for us has been some of our players’ work schedules, as well as some of our players getting ready to go to college, so we’ve had to work around a few things, but we’ve showed up with a strong team for each and every game.
“We’ve been competitive in every ballgame that we’ve played in. Even in some of the games that looked like they were getting away from us early, we stayed strong and came back and kept the game competitive. We started the season rather well. We won some key games, but since the first of July, it’s been a struggle working through the holiday and keeping people focused on playing baseball.”
One area that has been a strength for the Oilers has been their pitching, and Harrison said that will be a major factor this weekend.
“As in any tournament, pitching is always going to be one of your main focuses,” Harrison said. “You want to make sure you can keep certain players within certain pitch counts. Our pitching has been a positive for us this year. It’s been an ultimate surprise as compared to what we thought it was at the start of the year.
“We’ve had some key guys step up and have done a phenomenal job of eating up some innings and keeping baserunners down. It’s kept us in every ballgame that we’ve played in this year, so we hope that’s going to transition to the state tournament as well.”
As far as expectations go for this weekend, Harrison is hoping the Oilers can have a longer run than in their previous two trips, which ended with two straight losses.
“We want to go up there and take it one game at a time,” Harrison said. “Our main focus is on Batesville. Last year, we exited the tournament rather early, so this year, our goal is to win a couple of games to where we can get to the next weekend.”