The UW-Eau Claire softball team traveled to UW-Oshkosh on Sunday, May 4 to play the 18th-ranked Titans in regular season WIAC conference finale.
The Blugolds in game one would fall into an early deficit as Oshkosh tallied three runs in the second inning, but would counter the Oshkosh attack with an RBI single from third-year Paige Lathrop.
The one run scored by Lathrop in game one would prove to be the only run the Blugolds would score as Oshkosh added two more runs in the sixth inning and would close out game one with a final scoreof 5-1 in favor of Oshkosh.
For head coach Leslie Huntington, the team was prepared to face good pitching from the Titans as the Titans have a collective earned run average (ERA) of 1.24 and are holding opposing batters to a .189 batting average.
“We knew we were going to face good pitching and knew we were going to face good defense,” Huntington said. “They’ve got 18 seniors on their team and are a veteran ball club that has a ton of experience at the national level and knew we were going to have to play our best against them.”
Going into game two, the Blugolds would face another good pitching performance from the Titans as the Blugolds were only able to muster one hit off of pitcher Grace Nardi, which came on a first inning single from Lathrop.
Despite the best efforts of the Blugolds to stifle the offensive attack from Oshkosh, they would scratch across two runs on a double in the second inning and on a bases-loaded walk in the fourth inning, winning game two by a final of 3-0.
A bright spot for the Blugolds on the day would come from second-year Lauren Trottier as she delivered 2 ⅓ innings of shutout pitching in relief of second-year starting pitcher Kira Schubert, striking out a batter while only surrendering three hits.
For Huntington, she felt like the team could’ve done a better job at attacking pitches low in the strike zone and being aggressive early in at bats.
“We’ve worked all year on attacking pitches low in the zone and we didn’t have real great discipline at the plate in sticking with that plan,” Huntington said. “That’s one of the things I hope we’ll work on in preparation for the conference tournament this weekend.”
Despite the tough weekend for the Blugolds at the plate, the team is looking optimistic going into conference tournament weekend as they clinched the three seed in the tournament and will face sixth-seeded UW-Stevens Point on Friday, May 9.
Lathrop said the team is looking to come out firing on all cylinders to start the tournament as the tournament is a single-elimination format.
“We’re getting ready to go and come out hot because we can’t have a bad game given it’s single elimination,” Lathrop said. “You’ve got to give everything you’ve got right away and keep the energy up through the entire tournament if we want to do well.”
Lathrop’s performance on offense during the season has been a key factor in the Blugolds success this season, as she’s batting at a team leading .460 batting average and is the overall team hit leader with 64 hits on the season.
For Lathrop, one of the key things for her continued performance on offense is to remind herself to have fun up there and to be relaxed while at the plate.
“The biggest thing for me is just to have fun up there,” Lathrop said. “I’ve been playing this sport since I was young and it’s always been fun for me and it’s been big for me to keep having fun.”
The Blugolds will open up the WIAC Tournament on Friday, May 9 as they take on UW-Stevens Point in Whitewater.
Mikalofsky can be reached at [email protected].
