Even though their literal trip to the playoffs took an hour and a half longer than expected, that didn't kill the fight from Turlock High’s softball team in their first-round matchup against Whitney on Tuesday. Unfortunately, the ball rolled the wrong way for the Bulldogs one too many times and they ended their season with a 2-5 loss.

“I told them I was proud of them for how they competed all seven innings,” said head coach Mike Souza. “That’s a good team over there in Whitney, they play in a very hard and tough league over there. I was just proud how hard they battled for sitting on a bus for three and a half hours. There’s not a lot of teams that went on and made the plays.”

The Bulldogs got their bats going early with a triple into right field and the run was brought in by a sacrifice RBI by Abbey Harrington. Unfortunately, the Bulldogs made some mistakes on defense and put batters on base with a couple of errors. Whitney hit a three RBI shot into center field and the Bulldogs lost the lead.

Harrington had five strikeouts and five hits. She gave up two more runs in the fifth, including a solo homerun.

“Abbey pitched well for us,” said Souza. “She just had a couple of mistakes pitching wise. Our defense let us down a little bit with committing five errors. As a team though, we swung the bat pretty well for not having played a game in over a week.”

The Bulldogs did not have the highest of expectations going into this season, and they are proud to prove a lot of people wrong.

“No one in the league thought we would finish as good as we did,” said Souza. “I told the girls the losses are on me, but it’s going to come down to their play. They worked hard and set goals; the first goal was to win the league and the second was to make the playoffs. I’m just proud of how hard they worked all season.”

The Bulldogs finished with a 10-5 record in league play and 18-10 overall. They tied with Enochs for second place in the CCAL.