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Steamboat Springs — Maggie Garcia is pretty committed to the Steamboat Springs girls softball team's improvement. The new head coach had surgery to remove her gallbladder Thursday, but that didn't stop her from traveling to Delta on Saturday to coach the team in its season-opening doubleheader.

"We have no pitchers that have ever really faced batters, so today was our experimental game," Garcia said of how she used the game situations to test out batting orders and positions in the field. "Now, we can start putting things in gear."

Garcia said the games went from one extreme to other, and that the games scores (losses of 23-1 and 19-4, respectively) did not indicate the drastic strides the Sailors made between the two games.

All three Steamboat pitchers got plenty of valuable experience on the mound. Mataya Flaharty pitched the entire first game, followed by Catie Winter and Darcy Hornstein, who both pitched the second.

After a first game in which the Sailors struggled to end innings on defense, the Steamboat girls started getting back to the fundamentals in the second game and then got on the board as Hornstein batted shortstop Sarah Hill in. With Hornstein and Winter on base, Ashton Palmer (who scored the first game's one run) knocked a two-run base hit to bring both players in. Then, she notched Steamboat's fourth run herself, on a passed ball.

"We'll get better," Garcia said. "Now the jitters are all out, and they're ready to play as a ball team."

Steamboat plays its next set of games Friday and Saturday at the Palisade Peach Fuzz Tournament against Montezuma-Cortez, Basalt and Grand Junction Central.

- To reach Dave Shively, call 871-4253

or e-mail dshively@steamboatpilot.com