The Greenville Dixie Ponytails All-Stars are headed to Troy after a series of stellar performances in the Sub-District 1 Tournament held at the Greenville Softball Complex.

Greenville served as host to Crenshaw County and Enterprise during the weekend’s round robin battles, and the 11-12-year-old Ponytails led the pack after a convincing final victory over Crenshaw, 13-3.

“We did really well,” said Greenville coach Kim Langford. “We hit the ball, ran bases and everybody pitched well. We played defense, we got ahead of them by 10 runs and we ended it in four innings.”

Despite getting off to a rough start with a loss on Friday night to Enterprise, the team managed to reel off three consecutive wins to advance to the district tournament in Troy.

Langford said that despite a couple of errors in a few games early on, she was most impressed with her players’ ability to correct their mistakes on the fly and pull together.

But as the coach of a team advancing into stiffer competition from the likes of their currently unknown sub-district 3 challenger, complacency is their biggest enemy.

“I’m sure there’s always something to improve upon, and I hate to criticize because I’m sure they put their best effort forward,” Langford said. “But we can always use a little improvement. We batted very well for three games, but on the second game we didn’t’ bat as well as we had. But other than that, there are just a few errors that we can correct and we’ll be fine.”

Director of Greenville Parks and Recreation Department Jerome Harris said that he found this year’s batch of fast-pitch softball players particularly impressive, and he shares Langford’s confidence in her team.

“Those were some of the most talented kids at that age that I’ve ever seen,” Harris said. “The girls are advancing a lot in fast pitch softball, and Greenville’s kids in particular did really well.”

The first pitch in the next round will be thrown on Friday night at 5 p.m. in Troy.