By
DONNY NADEAU
Saint Mary's Sports Information Director
CLERMONT, Fla. — The Saint Mary's University of Minnesota fastpitch softball team closed out its 10-game spring trip on Saturday — unfortunately for the Cardinals, things didn't go quite the way coach
Jen Miller had hoped.
The Cardinals managed just five combined hits in dropping back-to-back, trip-ending games to Eastern Nazarene and Wartburg.
Saint Mary's was held to three hits in falling to Eastern Nazarene 3-0 in their first game of the afternoon, and while Saint Mary's was able to scratch across a pair of runs — despite just two hits — in its second game of the day against Wartburg, the end result was the same, as the Knights dealt SMU a 5-2 setback.
Eastern Nazarene scored all the runs it would need with a solo run in the first inning on a one-out, sacrifice fly by Kiley Ozaki, and added a pair of insurance runs one solo home runs off the bats of Lauren Clements and Elisabeth Schaefer in the fourth.
The Cardinals were held to just one hit — a
Hallie Schmeling (Onalaska, Wis.) lead-off single in the fourth — off Schaefer through six innings, before getting a pair of singles from
Paige Gudmundson (Plainview, Minn.) and
Maria Averbeck (Lewiston, Minn.) in the seventh. With two on and two out, however, Schaefer recorded her 14th strikeout to end the threat — and the game.
For the second game in a row, the Cardinals found themselves trailing after the first inning, as Wartburg scored three times in the bottom of the first for a quick, 3-0 advantage.
Saint Mary's got one run back in the top of the fourth, with
Marissa Kleckler (Oregon, Wis.) scoring on a wild pitch, but the Knights answered with a solo run in the bottom of the inning to maintain its three-run cushion, 4-1.
Wartburg made it 5-1 with an unearned run in the sixth, but Saint Mary's threatened in the seventh, loading the bases with one out on three straight Knight errors, but could only manage one run — on Wartburg's fourth error of the inning — to account for the game's final run.
Kleckler and Gudmundson accounted for the Cardinals' only hits against Wartburg, while
Amber Chow (West St. Paul, Minn.) took the pitching loss, allowing five runs — four earned — on eight hits.
The Cardinals are now off until March 15, when they travel to the Rochester (Minn.) Dome for a pair of nonconference games against nationally ranked Luther. First pitch in Game 1 is set for 4 p.m.
