MOSES LAKE – The 18U Moses Lake Rattlers began their season at the Kate Austin Memorial Tournament over the weekend, going 3-2 in games against teams from across the Pacific Northwest.

With high school softball season having ended just under three weeks ago, it was a quick turnaround for the Rattlers before their tournament in Tri-Cities over the weekend.

“We’d only had a couple practices, so it was just kind of hit the ground running and see what we can do,” Head Coach Lisa Lawrence said. “We’ve got to fine-tune a little bit this week heading into another big tournament this weekend, but I think (last week’s tournament) went really well.”

Players’ familiarity with each other helped with the quick adjustment process, Lawrence said.

“We’ve been together a long time, a lot of our girls have played together since 10U,” she said. “When we get back together and start up again in the summers, it just picks up where it left off. It’s a little reunion and people are excited to get back together. We have such a high-level group too, I think that once we get back together it clicks almost immediately. It’s exciting to see.”

Moses Lake opened the tournament with back-to-back wins over the 18U Firecrackers and 18U Washington Fastpitch Academy, winning 8-1 and 6-0, respectively. Elizabeth Heinz struck out nine of her 21 batters faced against the Firecrackers, and Paige Richardson struck out seven Washington Fastpitch Academy batters. Addison Lawrence recorded four hits and four RBI in the first two games.

After back-to-back losses to the Washington Angels (9-4) and Montana Avalanche (7-2), the Rattlers closed out the tournament with an 8-0 win over the Washington Acers, where Heinz and Richardson combined for four strikeouts in 16 faced batters and Persayis Garza led the Rattlers with three hits.

“We played really well, hit well,” Lawrence said. “The games we lost – one of the games we needed to clean up our defense a little bit, so we’ll be working on that this week and continuing to make adjustments at the plate.”

Along with playing in the actual tournaments, all four tournaments on the Rattlers’ schedule feature college exposure camps.

“A lot of these college exposure tournaments, the first day they have college exposure camps where college coaches come and lead the camps, lead the instruction and then get to watch the players,” Lawrence said.

The Moses Lake Rattlers are composed of players from across the Columbia Basin, including local talent from Moses Lake, Othello, Quincy and Royal high schools.

“It makes the school season really fun because we see all these girls that we play with and we play against, so it’s fun to pull them together on the Rattler team,” Lawrence said.

The Rattlers will travel to the Triple Crown Valley Invite in Portland this weekend.

Ian Bivona may be reached at ibivona@columbiabasinherald.com.