Senior, Rachel Seigel, fields the ball in state tourney play against Sterling Thursday. (Photo credit: A. Dooley)

OKLAHOMA CITY—Your Welch Lady Cats faced the five-time state champion Sterling Lady Tigers in the first round of the fast-pitch softball state tournament Thur., Oct. 6, 2011. The Lady Cats came out strong, with an early over-the-fence home run by Rylee Chenoweth, to tie the game at 1-1 after the first inning. The game was very evenly matched, and the teams were tied at 3-3 after a sixth inning rally by the Lady Cats. A couple of Lady Tiger runs in the top of the seventh put Sterling ahead 5-3, and the Lady Cats weren’t able to answer back in the bottom of the seventh, ending the Lady Cats’ state tournament for 2011.

The Lady Cats made a great showing and were very competitive with the Lady Tigers. The community and WelchOK.com are very proud of the Ladies for the ability, athleticism, sportsmanship, and heart they showed this season. You did us proud.

We’re very happy that we were able to provide live online audio coverage via the Welch State Bank Mobile Webcast Unit. Special thanks, also, to Josh Schertz for joining Tyson Wynn and Toby Smith on the webcast. Here’s your after-the-fact playback.If you listened live, you know we had a hardware failure that caused a disconnection. The archive below contains the portion that you missed live.

Lady Cat Softball v. Sterling, State Tourney, 10/6/2011 [ 1:36:43 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Special note: We wish it were possible to provide live audio of every Welch sporting event, but it’s just physically not possible for the two of us who regularly cover events to do them all. We will continue to make special efforts to provide as much coverage of all sports that make it to the playoffs.