By JOHN JAMES MARSHALL, Journal Sports

Here’s some advice if you are trying to figure out the District 1-5A baseball race.

Don’t.

It’s not like things get turned upside down every week. It’s more like they get turned upside down every other day.

Byrd started off the season with a 1-9 record. But after the first two weeks of the district season, the Yellow Jackets were at the top of the standings at 4-0.

But that was last week.

Now, it’s Natchitoches Central at the top. And Parkway. And Captain Shreve. Oh, and look – there’s Byrd, too, even though the Jackets have lost their last two games.

How about this: Haughton (13-7, 2-4) is currently in seventh place in the district and could be in first place by the time the Easter Bunny shows up Sunday morning. The Bucs have lost three straight games by a total of four runs, but things can change a lot in 48 hours.

“We can all beat each other on any given day,” Captain Shreve coach Todd Sharp said. “There really hasn’t been many surprises because we are all competitive. On any given day, we can all win and we can all lose.”

“It’s a combination of a lot of good baseball teams that are pretty equally matched,” Airline coach Toby Todd said. “One or two pitches can be the difference in sweeping, splitting or getting swept.”

Parkway (14-6, 4-2) got 10-runned by Shreve and then two days later shut the Gators out 5-0. Benton 10-runned Natchitoches Central and then lost to the Chiefs 1-0 two days later. Haughton lost three straight district games by one run and then stranded the tying run at first base Tuesday night in a 5-2 loss.

Airline (9-10, 3-3) scored only four runs in its first four district games – and then scored 41 in the next two.

“If there is anything that has surprised me it’s that I thought that the district would be more offensive,” said Haughton coach Glenn Maynor. “To me, it seems like all the teams have pitched pretty well.”

“Any time you have good pitching, it keeps you in games,” Sharp said. “We lost some offense from last year, but we maintained most of our pitching and that’s what has kept us in games.”

“I was really impressed with Byrd’s pitching,” Todd said. “Not awed, but impressed because they could pitch. They don’t just throw. I’m not slighting them by any means, but I don’t think they had a guy who threw more than 82 (miles an hour). But they threw a lot of strikes and made good pitches when they needed to.”

Most felt that Natchitoches Central (15-3, 4-2) and Benton (16-6, 3-3) were the favorites coming into the season. The Chiefs because of their returning talent and the Tigers because of the depth of their pitching staff. At the end of play on Tuesday, Natchitoches Central is No. 1 in the non-select power rankings in the state and Benton is No. 10. So no surprise there.

However, Todd pointed to Shreve (14-7, 4-2) as being a bit of a surprise.

“I thought they had some holes to fill because of who they lost last year,” Todd said. “I knew their pitching would be good but I didn’t know about their offense. They’ve won some big games so far.”

The basic format of the District 1-5A schedule is set up for games on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Teams played a district opponent in back-to-back games (in effect, a series) and then move on to the next opponent.

Therefore, coaches can’t really stagger their pitching rotation for a particular opponent.  “It’s not a pitcher per team,” Sharp said. “It’s a pitcher per day of the week.”

“We are about to go play Captain Shreve (today and Saturday) and we really don’t have our top two pitchers available,” Byrd coach Greg Williams said. “We were in both games with Benton (8-4 and 5-2 losses in the last week), which is a good thing and a bad thing. You don’t want to chase after a win you may not get, but at the same time, you don’t want to give up on a game to save somebody.”

“There are a lot of years when you go into a series and you feel like you are going to win those games or you feel like there’s a really good chance you are going to lose those games,” Maynor said. “But not this year. Every game we’ve played so far has gone down to the wire.”

Today brings about another Thursday/Saturday series and another potential shift in the standings. It’s also rivalry time; in addition to Byrd-Shreve, Haughton plays Parkway, Airline meets Benton in battles of schools that share district boundaries. Natchitoches Central meets Southwood in the other 1-5A series.

“I don’t think our kids were too concerned when we started off like we did or got too excited when we started off the district like we did,” Williams said. “Our goal is just to try to get a little bit better every day.”

Contact JJ at johnjamesmarshall@yahoo.com