Every coach in the sporting world uses the clich’ "it’s not how you start that matters, its how you finish.&uot;

Selma High School’s Lady Saints softball team has been living examples of that saying ever since the regular season ended. Going into the sectional tournament with zero wins, the Lady Saints strung together a tournament that took them to the semi-final, and provided them with their first two wins of the season.

The Lady Saints notched one more, finishing as tournament runners up and earning a spot in the sub-state tournament against Northview of Dothan.

Lightning almost struck twice for Selma on Tuesday afternoon, but a base running blunder, ended the "if" game with the Lady Cougars on top 8-6.

Northview advanced to the second sub-state round and to probably another road trip, maybe this time against an opponent that had been scouted.

Those problems were evident in the third game of the best two-out-of-three series for the garnet clad visitors.

The Lady Cougars pushed out to an early lead, carried by a four run second inning. Jordan Herrin reached on a walk and then stole her way around the bases before being scored on an error by the left fielder. Carly Coker, who hit the fly that was dropped advanced and then was scored by Madison Wagner, pushing the score to 2-0. Wagner was scored by Carmen Chosie moving the visitors from Dothan to a 3-0 lead. Chosie was scored Whitney Kelly, moving the lead further away from the homestanding Lady Saints, 4-0.

Leading 8-1, Selma strung together a five-run sixth inning and early put themselves back in the ballgames.

Northview committed a handful of errors that kept the basepaths loaded with Lady Saints.

Fareka Lawler led off the inning with a single and was followed by Shanetta Craig, who singled. Hits from Venecia Eaton and Jorielle Scott brought those runners home and cut the seven-run lead to five, 8-3.

Kanisha Walker reached base when the first baseman for the Lady Cougars couldn’t hold onto the softball, as she was crossing the bag on one side of the field, a run was coming home from third cutting lead to four runs, 8-4.

The Lady Saints tacked on two more runs to push the score to 8-6.

They could get no further. In the top of the seventh inning with one out, Scott skied a ball to the short stop. The umps called the batter out for the infield fly rule. The short stop dropped the ball and Lawler advanced to third of her own free will, getting thrown out at third to end the game.

In the first game of the sub-state tournament Northview notched the victory with a tally of 6-1. Selma, however battled back to push the series even at 1-1 with a 4-3 game two.

The Northview High squad will advance to the second round of the sub-state tournament, putting them closer to the State championship tournament at Lagoon Park in Montgomery.