Softball Drops First Leg of RMAC Openers
By Matthew Roy
The Fort Lewis College women’s softball team suffered two big defeats at the hands of the Colorado School of the Mines Orediggers in their first home Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference matches of the season. The 12 p.m. game ended in six innings by a score of 13-2 and the 2 p.m. game ended in seven with a final score of 6-1.
“We just didn’t show up ready to play,” Elle Fracker, head softball coach, said. “There is really no excuse. We were just not ready to go and we will take that as coaches that we need to do a better job of getting everyone ready to go.”
The first game of the doubleheader started out close for the first couple of innings. The Orediggers scored two runs in the top of the first against Skyhawk starter Mandy Lorenson, but Lorenson seemed to settle down and cruise through the latter half of the first and into the second inning.
The turning point in this one, however, came early in the second inning when Lorenson was struck by a line drive right on her left hip and had to be helped off the field.
“She missed a spot and took advantage of it,” Fracker said. “As far as I know, she will be fine to go. We might have to sit her out a little tomorrow just to rest it and think about the season but nothing crazy.”
After Lorenson came out of the game, the Orediggers scored 11 runs on 10 hits and put the matchup away. FLC tried to mount a comeback in the fourth inning, but they could not string together the hits that they needed to mount the huge comeback.
In the second game of Sundays double-header, the Orediggers got out to an early lead and the Skyhawks bats went cold.
Skyhawk starter Kendra Keahbone allowed five runs on five hits in the first two innings before sophomore Kelly Decker came in to pitch the last five innings of the game. Decker kept the Skyhawks hopes alive in this one as she only allowed one run on eight hits.
The star of the second game was Oredigger starter Hallie Smith. She allowed a mear three hits and one run in her seven-inning, complete-game effort.
The two losses drop the Skyhawks to 6-10 (0-2) and pushes the Orediggers to 8-6 (2-0).
The Two teams will play the last two games of the series today in a double-header that will be played in Aztec, New Mexico. The games start at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.
“We just have to hope that everyone comes out ready,” Fracker said. “We can’t have mental errors, we can’t have physical errors really, but we can handle one or two of those, but the mental errors is where we get killed. We have to make adjustments all around. You can’t keep doing the same thing and expecting the result to change.”