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ARDEN HILLS, Minn. — After Saturday's Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference doubleheader against Bethel, you are going to be hard-pressed to convince Saint Mary's University fastpitch softball coach
Jen Miller that good things come in threes.
Bethel scored three runs in the third inning en route to a 4-1 victory in the opener, then scored three runs in the fourth — erasing a 2-0 SMU lead — and completed the sweep with a 7-4 victory in the nightcap.
The opened the scoring in Game 1 with a single run in the first, but SMU quickly responded, getting an RBI double by
Nicole Olson (New Brighton, Minn.) in the top of the second to knot the game at 1-1.
Then came the third, when Bethel sent eight batters to the plate, scoring three times on three hits to take a 4-1 advantage. An advantage that Royal pitcher Randi Thompson made standup, as she held SMU to just three hits over the game's final four innings in snapping SMU's four-game conference winning streak.
It was the Cardinals who got on the board first in Game 2, getting an RBI single by
Erin Stenseth (Eau Claire, Wis.) and a run-scoring ground-out by
Hailey Ohl (Bloomington, Minn.) in the top of the third to take a 2-0 advantage.
Starting in the fourth, however, the Royals' bats came to life, as Bethel scored three times in the fourth and plated four more in the fifth — two coming on a Jess Newstrom single to left — to take a 7-2 lead into the sixth.
Katy Gannon (Roselle, Ill.) did her part to get the Cardinals' going, as the senior belted her fifth home run in the last six games — a two-run shot — to cut the Bethel lead to 7-4.
Unfortunately, that would be as close as the Cardinals would get, as SMU was set down in order in the seventh to ice the Royals' Game 2 win.
Seven players accounted for the Cardinals' seven hits in the opener, while Stenseth, Gannon and Olson each had two hits in the nightcap.
SMU, which falls to 5-5 in the MIAC and 12-8 overall, steps out of conference play on Sunday, traveling to Decorah, Iowa, for a 2 p.m. doubleheader against 11th-ranked Luther.
