By
DONNY NADEAU
Saint Mary's Sports Information Director
WINONA, Minn. — The Saint Mary's University fastpitch softball team scored more runs in the first inning of the first game of its doubleheader against St. Catherine than the Cardinals did in both games — combined — against Saint Benedict two days earlier.
After managing just one run in falling to the Bennies 3-0 and 4-1 on Thursday, the Cardinals came out swinging against the Wildcats, scoring two in the top of the first inning — in each game of the Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference doubleheader.
Unfortunately, St. Catherine also had its hitting shoes on Saturday, as the Wildcats answered Saint Mary's two-run first with four runs in the third and four more in the fourth in beating the Cardinals 8-3 in the opener.
Game 2 proved to be an offensive slugfest, as the two teams combined for 16 runs and 20 hits. But it was the Wildcats who came up with the clutch hits late, as they scored three times in the bottom of the sixth inning to break a 6-6 tie and complete the conference sweep with a 9-7 victory.
The Cardinals came out swinging in the opener, getting RBI singles from
Amber Chow (West St. Paul, Minn.) and
Roni Stevens (Delano, Minn.) to jump out the early 2-0 lead.
Saint Mary's shut down the Wildcats in their first two at-bats, but SCU tagged Chow for four runs on four hits in the third, before adding four more runs — thanks in part to a pair of Cardinal errors — to push its lead to 8-2
Saint Mary's got one run back in the top of the seventh on a Chow run-scoring groundout to short, but it was too little, too late.
Paige Gudmundson (Plainview, Minn.) went 2-for-4 with a run scored, while Chow, Stevens, and
Maria Averbeck (Lewiston, Minn.) had Saint Mary's other three hits.
For the second game in a row, the Cardinals got out of the gates quickly in the nightcap, getting a two-run single by Averbeck in the top of the first.
St. Catherine answered with a two-run first of its own, but the Cardinals regained the advantage — scoring once on a
Hallie Schmeling (Onalaska, Wis.) single in the second, once on a
Haley Williams (Littleton, Colo.) single in the third, and once more in the fourth on the first of
Justine Schultz's (Winona, Minn.) three hits — to grab a 5-2 cushion.
The Wildcats put together their third four-run inning of the afternoon — this one coming in the bottom of the fourth — to give SCU its first lead of the game, 6-5.
Saint Mary's knotted the game at 6-6, scoring an unearned run in the top of the sixth, only to have St. Catherine take the lead for good, scoring three times in the bottom of the frame to take a three-run, 9-6 lead into the seventh inning.
The Cardinals loaded the bases with no one out in their final at-bat, but could only push one run across — that coming on an infield single by Schultz — in dropping its second straight to the Wildcats.
Schultz finished a perfect 3-for-3 with a pair of RBIs to lead the Cardinals' 12-hit Game 2 attack, while Gudmundson, Schmeling, and Averbeck all had two hits. Schultz and Averbeck each had two RBIs and Gudmundson scored three times.
The Cardinals (3-13 MIAC, 7-23 overall) are back in action on Monday, returning home to the Saint Mary's Field for a 3 p.m. conference doubleheader against Bethel.
