Ava High School and the Ava Lady Bears are hosting the Class 3, District 10 softball tournament this week, with finals to be played on Saturday.
First-round games were played on Wednesday afternoon with No. 4 Hollister facing No. 5 Forsyth at 4 p.m. and 3rd-ranked Mtn. View-Liberty playing Mountain Grove (6) at 6 p.m.
Reeds Spring, seeded first, and Ava, ranked 2nd, drew first round byes.
Semifinals will be played today (Thursday) with Reeds Spring playing the winner of the Hollister-Forsyth game at 4 o’clock, and Ava will play the winner of the Liberty-Mtn. Grove game at 6 p.m. No games are scheduled for Friday.
The championship game will begin at 12 noon on Saturday.
Admission of $4 will be charged for the district games and no local passes will be honored.
The Lady Bears are coming off a three-game losing streak and are hoping to get it back on track for district play today.
After losing to Mansfield on Sept. 28, 8-7, the Ava girls fell to Springfield Kickapoo here Thursday, Sept. 30, 4-0, and lost to West Plains on Monday of this week, 12-0 in five innings.
Ava had only four hits in the Kickapoo game, and struggled defensively in the last three games.
Ashlyn Mitchell went the distance for Ava against Kickapoo, striking out three batters and allowing only one earned run.
Ava had four errors in the game.
