To put it mildly, the Grove Lady Red have been snake bit so far this season.

Tuesday’s 5-3 loss at home to Coweta featured three calls that, if they had gone Grove’s way, probably would’ve changed the outcome of the game altogether. It seems that the softball gods are determined to make the Lady Red and their fans pay for each and every win from the last three seasons.

The loss to the Lady Tigers invoked feelings of déjà vu, as it was the sixth one (out of 11) by three runs or less. The Lady Red are often in games until the late innings, only to see them repeatedly slip away.

“Our margin for error is very slim,” head coach Jeremy Collins said Tuesday. “We have to be good for all seven innings, not just five or six. I think we played well enough, it’s just a matter of catching a break, but we have to create breaks for ourselves.”

I’ve had more than one person this season tell me that the Lady Red are a well-coached team that plays hard and always seems to know what it’s doing. Sometimes these things may be more easily seen from an outsider’s perspective, although I think anyone, in their calmer, more rational moments, can see it.

But a lack of scoring – Grove has scored three runs or less seven times this season – often leaves the team one bad inning, even one mistake, from turning a win into a loss.

It’s also clear that the team is getting better. Senior pitcher Emilee Iverson has allowed just three earned runs or less in each of the last four games. Tuesday’s game may have been her best yet.

“Emilee pitched well,” Collins said. “I thought Coach [Bryan] Tramel did a good job calling pitches that kept them off-balance. They didn’t know what was coming next and that’s a credit to him, to Emilee and to [catcher] Gabi [Fields] too.”

Combined with an improving defense, this has kept the team in more games. Now it’s just a matter of finding ways to win.

“We’ve just got to come up with a play when we need a play and come up with a hit when we need a hit and we just haven’t done it yet,” Collins said.

The good news is, with the season nearing the halfway point, there’s still time to turn things around. Grove will play in two tournaments over the next two weekends with a district game against Skiatook squeezed in between. Following that is the stretch run of seven district games. With District 5A-3 being somewhat muddled this season (only three teams are over .500 in district play), there’s still time for Grove to win some games and improve their playoff positioning.

The other good news is that District 5A-4, the district 5A-3 will be matched up against in the playoffs, isn’t exactly setting the world on fire. Aside from traditional powerhouse Carl Albert at 11-1, that district is an uninspired bunch of teams struggling to play winning softball. Avoid a regional matchup with the Lady Titans, and you’ve still got a better than average chance of making it to the state tournament.

Now if the Lady Red can just a find a way to finish games and turn those losses into wins