Game 1 Boxscore / Game 2 Boxscore
WINONA, Minn. — With one swing of the bat, the Saint Mary's University fastpitch softball team forgot all about their 16 hours in a bus just to play two games at home.
Nikki Jung (Inver Grove Heights, Minn.) belted a one-out single to score Amy Langer (Savage, Minn.) with the game-winning run in the bottom of the seventh inning as the Cardinals earned a split with previously unbeaten Wartburg, 2-1.
"That was a great doubleheader," said SMU coach Nikki Fennern, whose team dropped the opening game of the twin bill, 4-3 — despite a three-run home run from Amy Edge (Mineral Point, Wis.). "I think we could have been a little more crisp defensively in the first game, but overall, I thought it was a phenomenal day."
The Cardinals were scheduled to play six games in three days in St. Louis, Mo., as part of the Washington (Mo.) University Midwest Preseason Tournament this weekend, but when the Cardinals completed the eight-hour trek south, they discovered that the entire tournament had been rained out.
Not about to go another weekend without playing, Fennern quickly got a hold of Wartburg coach Kara Kehe — whose team also was supposed to play in the Washington tournament — and the two agreed to play a nonconference doubleheader at SMU on Saturday.
So SMU reboarded the bus and returned to Winona two hours before game time.
"It would have been nice to get those six games in, but I'm happy with the way things worked out," said Fennern. "You can't control the weather — we just tried to make the best of a bad situation."
Which is exactly what the Cardinals
Rebounding from that Game 1 loss behind the stellar pitching of senior Hanni Lohmann (Lake Elmo, Minn.), who held Wartburg to just five hits in notching the complete-game win.
After spotting the Knights a 1-0 lead in the top of the fourth inning of Game 2, SMU tied it in the bottom of the fourth when Jenni Gutterman (Shoreview, Minn.) scored on an error by Wartburg first baseman Stephanie Howe.
Errors proved to be Wartburg's downfall in the seventh as well. Langer got things going for the Cardinals with a one-out single and moved to second when rightfielder Jenny Flora mishandled the ball. Langer advanced to third on an error by shortstop Cindy Hannemann and scored when Jung belted her single to right.
"Wartburg came into today unbeaten (16-0) and rather than be intimidated by them, we used that as motivation — we wanted to be the team to hand them that first loss," said Fennern, whose team moved to 6-4 overall with the split. "I wasn't quite sure how we would react to spending so much time on a bus, but I don't think it affected us at all, we were focused and ready right from the opening pitch."
The Knights never scored more than one run in any inning against the Cardinals, getting single runs in the first, second, fourth and fifth innings en route to their Game 1 win, then just managed that fourth-inning run in Game 2.
"To hold a team like that to five runs — and no more than one in an inning – is a testament to the great pitching and the great defense that we have," said Fennern. "Our pitchers got us out of a few jams, and our defense got us out of a couple.
"I think the end result is pretty typical of what happens when two very good teams butt heads like that."
