On Friday, Feb. 9, the Colorado Mesa University softball team were seen elongating their winning streak even more with their wins against Northwest Nazarene University (NNU) and Western New Mexico University (WNMU).
Once again on the road, this time in Utah, the Mavericks showed another strong performance with a 13-4 win over NNU and a 7-1 rematch with WNMU.
“We had an opportunity to see everyone play. We sat down our starters, for the most part, to get everybody an opportunity to play,” Head Coach Ben Garcia said. “Softball is not a sport of nine players, you have to have some come off the bench and do some different things for you.”
In the first and higher scoring game against NNU, the Mavericks controlled a slow paced match up, until the sixth inning when there was a spike of runs.
In the first and the third inning sophomore infielder AnnMarie Torres scored two, two-run homers to give the Mavericks the 4-0 lead at the end of the third. Alexandria Dufour possessed an RBI double in the fourth for the last score until the sixth.
In the sixth, Brooke Hodgson got a three-run homer as for the first score of the sixth inning. That was just the start of the onslaught. Infielder Tegan Woosley got an RBI single from a fielder’s choice. Lexie Comer batted a two-RBI double on a single hit, bringing the Mavs to 13 runs off of 11 hits.
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Keeping NNU to four runs and having no errors showed yet another strong performance from the defense and combined with the six strikeouts between McKenzie Surface and Kimbri Herring. Herring pitched five innings with four runs allowed off of seven hits, but the offensive support allowed her to come up with her second win of the season.
The rematch against WNMU, unfortunately, didn’t see another 25 runs for the Mavs, but they still managed to keep the Rawhide to a single run, which ended up being a home run. No errors from the Mavericks and three strikeouts from Brooke Hodgson lead the way to shut down WNMU for the second time.
There were no scores for the Mavs until the bottom of the fourth when Bailey Kleespies hit a home run. This was then followed with a single by Alexa Samuels that achieved an RBI. Then Zoe Pakes would hit in another two runs with a double which was followed by a sacrifice fly from Brooke Hodgson which let Alexa Samuels score.
In the sixth, Alexandria Dufour and Brooke Hodgsons both got their own doubles and an RBI for each, rounding the score to seven at the start of the seventh.
“Our motto is to get better every game,” Garcia said. “There are things that we still need to work on, but the list is getting smaller each game. We want to keep it close and keep up the good work.”
CMU has another doubleheader against Concordia University Irvine and Cal Baptist to finish off their trip on the road on Saturday. These last few games in Utah will end two consecutive long weekends on the road but the Mavericks will play for the first time in Grand Junction on Feb. 24 against Chadron State.
