The dugouts of Adair-Kennedy Memorial Park and Dimond Park will finally see some use this weekend.
The Thunder Mountain High School softball team hosts Juneau-Douglas High School on Friday and Saturday at Dimond Park. The teams will play on field No. 4, the closest field to the Wells Fargo Dimond Park Field House.
It will be fans’ first opportunity to see seniors like Peyton Harp and Leah Spargo play at home this season.
JDHS went just 1-6 against TMHS last season but is feeling good after a 3-2 extra-innings win over Ketchikan on Saturday.
“I think the most encouraging part was we could go that long and we could persevere enough to win in eight (innings),” said senior Abby Meiners, whose sacrifice fly scored the game-winning run. Sophomore Asianna Mazon scored the first two runs for the Crimson Bears.
TMHS’ confidence was also bolstered by last weekend’s results. The Falcons secured a 3-0 sweep of Sitka High School, which included a 12-0 shutout on Saturday, when Rachel Macaulay and Maxie Saceda-Hurt logged three hits, respectively.
The Falcons team managed seven hits total in a 5-3 win over the Wolves on Friday.
“I think we just got to see their pitching more and more and just started barrelling up the ball a little better than we did the first night,” TMHS coach John Boucher said.
Baseball
JDHS and TMHS also face off in baseball on Monday night at Adair-Kennedy. It’s the first of three makeup games scheduled over the coming weeks (Monday, May 7 and Tuesday, May 15 are the other two) after cancellations last weekend.
In the meantime, JDHS plays Petersburg on Friday and Saturday. The Crimson Bears outscored the Vikings 34-2 in three regular-season games last season.
Learn more about the baseball teams in a season preview in Friday’s Empire.
Track
The JDHS and TMHS track teams will try polishing up their times at the Sitka Invitational this weekend. The Ketchikan boys and TMHS girls established themselves as early favorites for their respective Region V titles. At last weekend’s Ketchikan Invitational, the Ketchikan boys (145 points) outscored Sitka (104) and TMHS (97) while the Falcons girls (186 points) defeated Petersburg (140) and Juneau-Douglas (86), among other teams.
Soccer
After a combined five nonconference games last weekend, the JDHS boys and girls soccer teams have another eight on their plate this week.
The teams played at Service High School in Anchorage last night. Tonight, the boys and girls teams will play Palmer before taking on Wasilla on Friday and East Anchorage on Saturday night.
The Crimson Bears boys lost to Service 3-1 but defeated Wasilla 5-1 last season. The Crimson Bears girls lost to Service 4-0 but defeated Wasilla 1-0.
The TMHS boys and girls soccer teams play Ketchikan this weekend, with both Thunder Mountain teams looking to record their first wins of the season. The Falcons boys (0-3) play Ketchikan on Thursday and Friday night at TMHS. The Falcons girls pay a visit to Ketchikan for games Friday and Saturday.
• Contact sports reporter Nolin Ainsworth at 523-2272 or nainsworth@juneauempire.com. Follow Empire Sports on Twitter at @akempiresports.
