By GRAHAM BROOKS / Staff Writer

CALERA–The Helena Lady Huskies softball team traveled to Calera on Tuesday, April 12 needing a win to cap off a perfect record in Class 5A Area 7 competition.

Helena continued their strong offensive performance that has been a trend for the last couple games and defeated the Lady Eagles 12-0 to finish 6-0 in area play and capture the area championship.

Helena got on the board quickly in the top of the first inning after scoring a run on a Calera error and an RBI single by Katie Lively to go up 2-0.

The game remained a 2-0 score until the top of the fourth inning when the Lady Huskies added three more runs when Sarah Kallaher singled to right field to score Tamar Watts. Kallaher would also score in the inning.

Helena broke the game open in the top of the sixth inning after a solo home run by Reagan Curtis, scoring multiple runs after Calera errors and an RBI single by Jordan Ingram to put Helena up for good at 12-0.

Helena head coach Heidi Kouveras praised both the offense and her team’s pitching for the team’s success as of late.

“I think our key factor right now is we want to keep our offensive lineup to match our pitchers on the mound,” said Kouveras. “Our pitchers are both lights out right now and we’ve been working at practice a lot on just hitting the ball down and concentrating on grounders and line drives. We’ve been able to produce a lot of power. Almost everybody in our lineup has hitting power. We’re just working really hard on offense to score as many runs as we can in case we make errors on defense.”

The winning pitcher for Helena was Avery Barnett who pitched a complete game shutout, allowing no runs on two hits while striking out six.

When asked what the goal would be in the next few weeks before postseason play, Kouveras said it’s obvious the team wants to make regional’s and hopefully beyond.

“We’re on a nine game win streak right now and our goal is to make it regional’s obviously,” said Kouveras. “We’re confident enough we’ll be one of those top two teams to make it into regional’s but we’re really concentrating on just being full out 100 percent solid all the way through the game.”

The Lady Huskies have outscored its opponents 66-3 in the past five games.