By Garrett Kroeger

The Natchez Democrat

FERRIDAY — The Delta Charter School baseball team’s season hasn’t gone the way coach Jarrett Hoffpauir expected it to go.

On a cloudy Tuesday afternoon at Delta Charter, nothing went right once again for the Storm as they lost 11-0 to the Ouachita Christian School Eagle in five innings.

“(Ouachita Christian) is a good hitting team,” Hoffpauir said. “When you don’t score runs, it’s tough to win. That’s a heck of team over there, who will do great things.

“It’s just kind of one of those things. We didn’t play bad, we just didn’t hit. It’s hard to compete against teams like that to be honest with you.”

Although Hoffpauir seemed visibly frustrated with his team’s performance, he wasn’t disappointed. He was OK with the Storm’s effort, even though they allowed 10 hits, two home runs and only mustered two hits against the Eagles — one coming from Landon Davis and the other coming Cole McGivaren.

Hoffpauir said it is hard to play catch up when a team jumps out to an early lead.

In the first two innings, Ouachita built a 7-0 lead over Delta Charter. Due to that, the Eagles’ pitchers felt comfortable when throwing to the Storm, which made the deficit that much harder to overcome in Hoffpauir’s mind.

“They had multiple pitchers who threw strikes,” Hoffpauir said. “They jumped out early on us. They scored seven in the first two innings. So, pitching gets comfortable after that. It’s hard to play catch up at that point.”

While Delta Charter struggled, its play improved in Game 2 of the double header against Ouachita. However, the Storm still lost 7-4 in seven innings.

“It could be better,” said senior shortstop Trenton Miller.

After the two games, Delta Charter fell to 6-10 on the season and 2-2 in district play.

As the year is winding down, Hoffpauir just wants his team to improve every day. If the Storm does that, he will be happy.

“Keep learning. Getting better every day,” Hoffpauir said. “Learning something new every day, that is my goal.

“I think the past week or so, we have done some good things. We just have to keep building on it. Just mistakes, we have to learn from them and hopefully not make them again.”

Delta Charter will look to build and avoid the mistakes they made against Ouachita as it prepares for its fifth district game at 5 p.m. on Tuesday at Oak Grove High School.