Sports Editor

The No. 3 ranked Charles Henderson High School softball team will enter what a very tough 2000 schedule has been preparing them for all of the regular season – the post season.

Today, the Lady Trojans will lock horns in the first round of the Section 2 Tournament with Russell County at 6 p.m. CHHS is the No. 1 seed after a very successful 28-10 regular season record.

The tournament is set up as a double-elimination affair with Carroll, Eufaula, CHHS, Russell County and Valley all participating and with a potential matchup between the Lady Trojans and their rivals the No. 5 ranked Eufaula Lady Tigers in the second round.

Eufaula faces Carroll of Ozark in the first round and should both they and Charles Henderson post a victory, would meet first thing Saturday at 10:45 a.m.

It would be the two team’s fourth meeting of the year with CHHS taking two of the first three away from the Lady Tigers, but the Lady Trojans fell 3-1 at Troy in the two teams’ last meeting back on May 1.

CHHS and Eufaula are the only two ranked teams in the section and sport two of the better pitchers in the state in Lady Trojan ace Betsy White and EHS star Kristin Howard.

The Lady Tigers will get the home-field advantage during the tournament, but the last time the two teams met at Eufaula, being on the road didn’t hinder Charles Henderson very much in a 9-3 showing in which White tossed a one-hitter.

The winner and the runner-up of each Sectional Tournament in the state will move on to their individual Sub-State showdowns next week. In that section of the playoffs the Section 2 winner will face the Section 1 runner up – and vice versa – in a best of three game set with the Sectional winner hosting the first game and the runner-up hosting the second. A coin toss will determine the third if necessary.

Section 1 has Citronelle, Escambia Co., Jackson, Monroe Co. and B.C. Rain