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WINONA, Minn. — Getting off on the right foot hasn't been the problem for the Saint Mary's University fastpitch softball team of late.
Finishing what they've started, on the other hand, has been.
For the fourth straight time, the Cardinals opened a doubleheader with a win, as SMU outlasted UW-La Crosse 7-4 in the opening game of their nonconference twinbill at Cotter Field Sunday.
For the second straight time in the last five days, however, things didn't go quite as well in Game 2, as the Eagles banged out 11 hits — including their third and fourth home runs of the day — and cruised to a 9-3 victory to earn the split.
"I thought we came out and really swung the bats well in the first game," said SMU coach
Jen Miller, whose team has not lost the first game of a doubleheader since falling to Buena Vista 4-2 on March 8. "Our problem right now is, we haven't been able to follow up that solid Game 1 performance in the second game."
The Cardinals — 3-2 winners, and then 5-1 losers to Bethel last Wednesday — had all the answers against the Eagles in the opener Sunday. UW-L got on the board first, scoring a single run on a solo home run off the bat of Jenna Ahnen, only to have SMU answer with two runs in the bottom of the second, as
Danielle Geske (Rosemount, Minn.) belted her team-leading fourth home run.
SMU then put the game out of reach in the fifth, scoring five runs on four hits to grab a 7-2 advantage. The Eagles would get to SMU starter
Sarah Fitzgerald (Colo, Iowa) for two more runs in the top of the sixth, but it was too little, too late, as the Cardinals held on for their sixth win in their last seven games.
Then came Game 2.
"We just couldn't seem to do anything right (in the second game)," said Miller, whose Cardinals found themselves staring at a 2-0 first-inning deficit, as Sarah Pfeifer belted a one-out, first-inning home run. "We gave (UW-L) the momentum right off the bat and we just never seemed to recover from that first inning."
SMU did get a run back in the bottom of the first, as
Cassie Otte (Randolph, Minn.) tripled — extending her career-high hitting streak to 19 straight games — and scored on a one-out,
Jenny Giannini (River Grove, Ill.) single.
That would be the highlight of the Cardinals' Game 2 offensive attack, however, as UW-L scored seven unanswered runs to push its lead to 9-1, before SMU scored single runs in the sixth and seventh to close out the scoring.
"We've got to do a better job of playing at our best for 14 innings," said Miller, whose team hits the road for games at Hamline (Tuesday) and at Augsburg (Wednesday), before returning home for a conference doubleheader against St. Catherine Saturday. "We can't be as inconsistent as we have been lately.
"We've got a lot of softball to play in the next couple of weeks, and we need to be at our best — for every inning of every game."
