NATCHEZ — Cathedral was hoping to continue its momentum after winning two games in a row at the Brookhaven Tournament last Saturday and then upsetting Franklin County in impressive fashion Monday night.

West Lincoln made sure that didn’t happen thanks to a pair of six-run innings as the Lady Bears defeated the Lady Green Wave 17-7 at the Natchez-Adams Girls Softball Complex.

“I was real worried coming into tonight’s game,” West Lincoln head coach Andrew Redd said. “Us and Bogue Chitto had clinched first and second. Cathedral’s been playing real good ball lately.”

Unfortunately for the Lady Green Wave, they did not start liked they had hoped to. They went down in order against pitcher Shelby Lofton and then the Lady Bears opened the game up with a six-run rally in the top of the second.

“We would’ve liked to have won our last game. The bright spot is we have no seniors,” Cathedral assistant coach Penny Daggett said. “In hindsight, there’s a lot of things we should’ve done defensively, especially after the way we played last night.”

West Lincoln had five hits in its half of the second, but a bases-clearing error turned out to be huge as Steph Smith, who led off with a single and Haley Ainsworth both scored to make it a 3-0 game.

The Lady Bears cushioned their lead with four more runs to take what appeared to be a commanding 7-0 lead.

Cathedral (9-11, 1-4) responded with five runs in the bottom of the third inning to make it a 7-5 game.

“We generally start off real good the first couple of innings and then we slack off,” Redd said. “They did a good job.”

But that would be as close as the Lady Green Wave would get as West Lincoln scored four runs in the top of the fifth and another six runs in the top of the fifth.

The big hit for the Lady Bears in the top of the fifth proved to be the difference as Carrie Farver hit a two-out, two-run triple for a 17-5 lead. Cathedral scored two runs in the bottom of the fifth on an error and an RBI single by Durkin, but with one out, Huffines hit into a game-ending 6-4-3 double play.

“We obviously have a foundation. We need to make a few tweaks,” Daggett said. “Right now we need to look to the future. I think we’ve got a lot to build on for next year. We’ve got a lot of good young players.”