Game 1 Boxscore / Game 2 Boxscore
WINONA, Minn. — As if opening your Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference season against the top-ranked team in the country wasn't tough enough.
Add to that the fact that the opposing coach was your coach when you were playing collegiate ball, and that's what Saint Mary's University first-year head fastpitch softball coach Jen Miller faced Thursday afternoon at the SMU Field.
And the mentor certainly didn't take it easy on his star catcher.
With John Tschida at the helm, the Tommies gave the Cardinals a first-hand look at why they have won six of the last seven MIAC regular-season titles and are 114-5 against conference foes over the past five seasons.— they are good.
Very good.
The Tommies broke open a scoreless game with a single run in the fourth and four more in the fifth en route to a 6-1 win in the opener. UST's bats picked up right where they left off in Game 2, as St. Thomas scored in three of the first four innings in cruising to an 8-2 win and a sweep of the teams' conference opener.
"It's tough to open your conference season against the No. 1-ranked team in the nation," admitted Miller, whose team fell to 4-6 overall with the losses. "But everyone's got to face them sometime this season. Despite the final scores, I thought we played very well — we play like we did today the rest of the season, and we're going to win our share of games."
Megan Wallisch (Loveland, Colo.) and UST's Maria Bye were locked in a pitchers' duel through the first three innings of the opener, but the Tommies finally got to Wallisch in the fourth, as Bye helped her own cause with an RBI double to right-center.
The Tommies then put the game out of reach, combined three hits with one Cardinal error to score four more times and take a 5-0 advantage. Bye then completed the UST onslaught with a solo home run in the seventh.
UST didn't waste any time in the nightcap, scoring twice in both the first and third innings, before erupting for three more runs to take a commanding, 7-0 lead after four innings. SMU finally got on the board in the bottom of the sixth, getting RBI singles by Tara Close (North St. Paul, Minn.) and Danielle Geske (Randolph, Minn.) to cut the gap to 7-2, but UST added another insurance run in the top of the seventh to ice the sweep.
"It was a little weird going head-to-head with Tschida — it's definitely different being the head coach and not the assistant," said Miller, who played for Tschida as a freshman and a sophomore — including 2000 season, when the two helped bring SMU its first-ever national championship. "He's a great coach and I learned a lot playing under him. But I have to admit, it would have been nice to pick up a win against him."
