Story by Vince Ghiringhelli, UPS Sports Info
TACOMA, Wash. - Doomed by timely errors, the Puget Sound Loggers
dropped a pair of Northwest Conference softball games to the
Willamette Bearcats, 7-5 and 9-7, on Sunday afternoon at Logger
Softball Field in Tacoma, Wash.
The errors proved to be costly for Puget Sound all day, but none
more so than in the first game when four of the Bearcats seven runs
were unearned. The Loggers committed four errors that lead to big
second and fourth innings in which Willamette scored three runs in
each. A run late in the game gave Willamette just enough cushion to
prevent a Logger comeback.
Offensively, sophomore Anthea Aasen (Tacoma, Wash./Wilson) led
the way for the Loggers, going three for four on the game with
three hits and an RBI. In her first game back with the team, junior
Carolyn Moore (Seattle, Wash./Holy Names) turned in a solid outing
after just finishing her basketball season the previous night.
Moore went two for three with a walk.
Junior pitcher Auriel Sperberg (Spanaway, Wash./Graham-Kapowsin)
collected the loss in the first game after throwing another
complete game for the Loggers, giving up 11 hits after facing 36
batters on the day.
In the second game of the day, the Loggers blew the doors off
the Bearcats early on but weren't able to sustain the 5-0 lead they
built in the third inning. Willamette came back quickly, tying the
game in the top of the fourth before taking a four run lead over
the course of the next two innings. A two-run home run by sophomore
P/2B Aryn Grause (Corvallis, Ore./Crescent Valley) gave the Loggers
their steam in the third, but they left three runners on base at
the end of the inning and lost momentum going forward after a
strikeout and a lineout ended the inning.
Puget Sound made a big push late, scoring in the bottom of the
seventh to come within two and then positioning runners on second
and third before sophomore catcher Megan Janes (Littleton,
Colo./Arapahoe) hit a ground ball that was fielded and converted to
end the game.
Grause gets the loss for the Loggers, but Puget Sound was forced
to use their three pitchers through the course of the game.
Sophomore Bijou Felder (Berkeley, Calif./St. Mary's) came in for
relief in the fifth before Sperberg came in during the middle of
the sixth to close the game out.
Aasen went 2-4 with two RBI's and a double for the Loggers,
while junior third baseman Alex Usher (Carson, Wash./Stevenson) had
two RBI's in the game, giving her three for the day.
Puget Sound will be back on the diamond next Saturday for a
doubleheader at Lewis and Clark before heading further south to
take on George Fox on Sunday.
