Western’s softball team started its campaign for a Sun Belt Tournament championship yesterday as the third seed in this year’s tournament.

But the Lady Toppers started off the tournament with a hiccup, falling to the sixth-seeded South Alabama 6-1.

With the loss, the Lady Toppers moved to 32-18 on the season and 14-10 in Sun Belt Conference play. It was the first loss to a Sun Belt team since April 25. In that last loss, Western also fell to South Alabama 8-0 in six innings in Mobile, Ala.

Coach Tyra Perry said that she was disappointed that the Lady Toppers’ leaders didn’t show much presence.

“I think we had a lack of leadership out there today,” Perry said. “We played scared and timid.”

Junior first baseman Lindsay Antone said that South Alabama did a better job taking advantage of mistakes than Western.

“We made a few errors, and they capitalized on our errors,” Antone said. “When they made errors, we didn’t necessarily capitalize on them.”

With the loss, Perry said that the Western coaching staff and players are on the way to make adjustments to possibly keep their season alive today in the losers’ bracket of the tournament.

“We need to be more aggressive and play with confidence,” Perry said. “We did come back at the end and got quite a few hits. We got some consecutive hits. Even the play that we ended on, we had a line drive from (junior shortstop) Brooke Reed that the South Alabama players made a good play on. So we did fight and battle at the end to have a chance to score some runs.”

Even though Western lost game one of the Sun Belt Tournament, there were a couple positive points in the game.

A late run was produced in the seventh inning with a home run by Antone and singles by juniors Kelsey McCauley and Jamie Hennis. The late Lady Topper rally was ended when Brooke Reed hit the aforementioned line drive that concluded in a double play by the South Alabama infield.

Antone said that there were other things to look toward today and that the team has confidence going into today’s match-up.

“I think that we will be feeding off that hitting we were doing,” Antone said. “Our defense will still be on it. We’ve been in this situation before. We know what to do.”

The Lady Toppers are scheduled to continue Sun Belt Conference Tournament play at 12:30 p.m. today at Lovelace Stadium against Troy in Denton, Texas.