Bonanza softball gets its groove back

For nearly three weeks, Bonanza’s softball team has tried to regain the effort and confidence it displayed in winning a spring break tournament.

The Bengals hadn’t been playing poorly, but they didn’t have the same swagger they displayed while winning the Spring Jamboree tournament at Majestic Park.

Bonanza appeared to get its groove back in the final two innings Wednesday at Desert Oasis, scoring 14 runs to pull away for a 16-1 victory.

The Bengals (25-5, 10-2 Southwest) maintained their hold on second place in the league by rolling over the Diamondbacks (10-19, 8-4).

“We just needed that fight back in us,” Bonanza coach Dusti Winward said. “We went so long with nothing bad happening to us. There has to be some adversity. I’m just happy to see them back to where they were before.”

Since spring break, the Bengals had wins over the bottom five teams in their league, but entered Wednesday on the heels of losses to Cimarron-Memorial and Clark.

“We’ve been working really hard, but we were just having some problems mentally,” said shortstop Alex Teed, who had six RBIs in the final two innings. “This is the team we knew we had all along.”

Nicolette Lind’s RBI triple, her second of three triples in the game, drove in the first run of a six-run fifth inning, giving Bonanza a 3-1 lead.

It didn’t take long for the floodgates to open. Teed made it 8-1 with a three-run, inside-the-park homer to right field. It was her third home run in as many games.

Lind added another RBI triple, and Teed had a bases-loaded triple in Bonanza’s eight-run sixth. Bonanza sent 21 batters to the plate over the last two innings.

Lind, the Bengals’ No. 2 hitter, was 4-for-5 with three runs and four RBIs. Teed, who bats eighth, was 3-for-4 with two runs and six RBIs.

“Those two just really keep their hands through the ball,” Winward said.

Emily Osborn was 3-for-4 with four runs for Bonanza.

The spark couldn’t have come at a better time for the Bengals, who host Durango (21-7, 12-1) in a battle of the Southwest’s top two teams Friday.

“We are so pumped up for that game,” Teed said. “This just makes us more confident.”