The Miners lost two games in a row to the 15th nationally ranked Missouri Tigers on Monday, March 21 at the Helen of Troy softball field after coming off three straight wins over the weekend against Louisiana Tech.
Although the Miners struggled against the SEC powerhouse team, head coach Tobin Echo-Hawk believed there were a lot of takeaways in the doubleheader.
“In all honesty, I’d rather play a stronger team like this to help challenge us going into conference play than to just play a team we can just walk all over and not get any challenge out of it,” Echo-Hawk said. “Against this team, down by so much—for us to keep battling shows a lot about our kids not to get discouraged no matter what the score is.”
In the first game, Missouri came out strong from the dugout. Outfielder Taylor Gadbois of the Tigers had a left field hit for an RBI to take an early 1-0 lead. From this run, Missouri was rolling on offense; they dominated the first inning to take a 10-1 lead going into the second inning.
At the top of the second inning, Gadbois hit a grand slam to extend the lead to 15-2. Then, the Miners were able to have a bright spark in the bottom of the third inning from Taylor Sargent. She had a left field hit to send Kiki Pepi into home plate. Following the run, Hope Moreno had an RBI sending Sargent in for a score. However, the rally was not enough to lead a resurgence, and the Miners fell 15-4 in game one.
Game two had a completely different start. The Miners were able to hold off the Tigers until the top of the second inning, when Emily Crane of Missouri knocked it to center field to send Kirsten Mack home for the first run of the game. The Miners could not get anything going offensively and were shut out 11-0.
“We feel we could’ve done a lot better than what we did,” captain Netane Kawehlokalani said. “The outcome would’ve maybe been the same, but we could’ve showcased a little more of who we are. A lot of us are a little tired. We’ll re-group and take the same mentality from this weekend onto next.”
Taylor Sargent, who had two RBI’s in the first game, was optimistic even though they lost both games.
“We had a nothing to lose, mentally,” Sargent said. “We put ourselves out there as best as we could, and above all, we get to see the best competition and prepare us for our conference. I feel we could’ve and should’ve gone harder out there, but this definitely helped prepare us a little bit more.”
Agreeing with Sargent, Echo-Hawk believed the series against Missouri can help the team improve.
“We want to play the best, and playing a team like this really improves us and makes our hitters better, and facing these strong hitters really makes our pitchers better,” Echo-Hawk said.
The Miners will begin conference play starting March 25 at Florida International.
Christopher Piñones may be reached at [email protected].
