Nansemond River High School softball coach Gabe Rogers had determined recently that something important was missing from the team this year.

His conversation with a player before practice on Tuesday helped to provide some insight into what it might be, and Wednesday’s 9-2 Lady Warriors victory against visiting Southampton High School suggested it might be back.

“I was very, very happy with tonight’s game,” Rogers said. “I thought we played well.”

But before that, he said something else: “I was really excited for tonight.”

The conversation on Tuesday had reoriented how he was analyzing the team’s situation.

“I’m looking at the girls, and I see something missing, and the girls are looking at me, and they saw something missing,” he said.

This is Rogers’ third year coaching the Lady Warriors, and their lineup is almost the same as it was in 2013, with the same talented players routinely making stellar plays.

“Because I see it in games, I see them do it in practice all the time, you kind of gain that sense of complacency of, ‘Well, yeah, yeah, she made that play. She does it all the time. I’m used to it,’” he said. “And in years past, I’m all excited about that stuff.”

“How the leader goes is how everybody else will follow,” Rogers said.

And Friday, he was really excited again. He said his players were already ready to go, but “when they saw my excitement, I think it motivated them.”

Their 3-2 loss to Deep Creek High School last Friday helped further illustrate their habit of starting sluggishly on offense, only roaring to life once the other team has scored.

Rogers issued a challenge to his first three batters, which are juniors KateLynn Hodgkiss and Jaclyn Mounie and senior Morgan Lowers.

“In the first inning, you should be giving me a run, every game,” he said he told them. “And they did tonight. In that first inning, (the Lady Indians) scored one, we came back and scored two.”

The Lady Warriors added three runs in the second, two runs in the fourth and two runs in the sixth.

“That’s what it should be,” Rogers said. “We don’t need to score eight runs in an inning. We just need to try to be consistent in scoring in every inning, and the girls in our lineup should be able to do that.”

Lowers went 2-for-4 on the night, with a double and a triple.

“I just went out there and played as hard as I possibly could,” she said. “I was kind of satisfied with my hitting.”

Mounie went 1-for-2 with two runs batted in and three runs scored, and Hodgkiss had two runs scored, despite not having any hits.

Rogers said that the big thing about Hodgkiss is “she’s getting on base. She knows I don’t care what your batting average is; all I care about is, ‘Are you getting on base?’”

Sophomore Kelly Lafferty hit an RBI single, junior Calah Savage had a hit, junior Lauren Davis had an RBI and junior Lauren Maddrey went 1-for-2 with a run scored.

In the circle, Maddrey threw eight strikeouts and allowed two hits, and sophomore Madison Rhoads, who relieved Maddrey, threw two strikeouts and allowed one hit.

“Even the girls that aren’t typically in the lineup are good ball players and can score,” Rogers said.

They proved it on Wednesday. Junior Nikki Pelle-Jones had a single and a run scored, junior Alayah McCullough had an RBI single and freshman Hannah Gill had an RBI double.

Nansemond River (9-2, 1-0) visits Lakeland High School on Monday.