The Hillsdale College softball team opened last weekend with a 13-3 victory in the fifth inning, invoking the NCAA’s mercy rule against Trevecca Nazarene University. The Chargers also topped Huntington 3-1, but dropped games to Indianapolis and Truman to solidify a 2-2 weekend.
“Our strongest game was definitely against Trevecca Nazarene,” head coach Joe Abraham said. “We just came out hitting the ball, and we scored in all five innings. Overall, we hit well throughout the lineup and jumped on them with five runs at the top of the first and never looked back. That was a great game for us.”
Senior pitcher Sarah Klopfer said the team exhibits an experience-based confidence which five-inning games have reinforced.
“Overall, the entire team sees the ball really well and goes to the batting box with confidence,” she said. “Usually, we don’t see that this early in the season.”
Although the entire team played well, senior outfielder Bekah Kastning had a stellar performance, hitting a homerun, a triple, and a double, driving in four runs.
The team suffered a close defeat on Saturday against University of Indianapolis, who were the 2015 Midwest Region champions. Abraham said Indianapolis’ All-star pitcher posed a huge challenge for the Chargers.
“In addition to her being incredibly good, you add to that how we never see that type of pitching, and we were just completely overmatched,” Abraham said. “As is the case for most teams that she faces. She would be a good pitcher at the top of Division I.”
Despite the loss, Abraham said the Chargers held their own until the seventh inning of the game through their strong defensive performance.
“We held them to two, but they also have an excellent lineup,” he said. “We played great defense that game, and Sarah Klopfer pitched a great game. We were in the game until the final out, despite the fact that she struck us all out. All it would have taken is for someone to connect with one, and we would’ve had a tied game.”
The team rallied later that afternoon and defeated Huntington University 3-1. Abraham said the game was close until the last inning, but the team pulled through for a hard-fought victory.
“Just the emotional wear and tear of the Indianapolis game made the Huntington game a very difficult one for us,” he said. “The fact that we played great defense, got a great pitching effort from Sarah Gruenert, and managed to score the runs when we really needed to showed a lot about our team — the maturity, the fight, the will — that would have been a very easy game for us to lose.”
The team took another tough loss on Sunday against Truman State University, 4-0. Despite a strong throwing game by senior pitcher Sarah Klopfer, strong winds and three runs at the bottom of the sixth inning tipped the scales in Truman’s favor.
“We didn’t strike out all that much, but we had a hard time getting a good piece of the ball with the bat, and the wind was blowing in hard, which cost us at least one home run, and maybe two,” Abraham said. “Between that pitcher being good, and us just hitting into some bad breaks, she shut us down.”
This weekend marks the final game the Chargers will play until the their conference opener March 25. Although the team typically plays in Florida over spring break, the late break this year prevents them from doing so. Additionally, the southern teams will have already begun their conference season, leaving the team with significantly less out-of-conference games this year.
“For us this year, the difference will be that we will not have played a game in almost four weeks, while the rest of the league will have played much closer to the time of our actual conference games,” Abraham said.
Even with the lower number of games under their belt, freshman second baseman Amanda Marra said that the tough competition will prove valuable in preparation for the in-conference season.
“There are some really good teams in our league, so the games we’ve played this past weekend really prepared us for that,” she said. “We’re going to be ready to go.”
In their eight games thus far, Abraham said their average of 7.5 runs per game bodes well for the rest of the spring season, which they will begin with a 5-3 record.
“Our hitting, our defense, and our pitching have all been really good,” he said. “We just lost to three really good teams with three really good pitchers.”
