Even if it had sat and brainstormed in practice before Wednesday’s doubleheader against Illinois-Chicago, the Northwestern softball team couldn’t have imagined two less similar games.
NU exploded in its first home game, batting through the order in two different innings en route to a 15-1 trouncing of the Flames. But just hours later, the Cats left Anderson Field with a split, losing the second game 3-1. The loss dropped the Cats (15-16) back to one game under .500 on the season, exactly where they had started the day.
NU shelled Illinois-Chicago pitcher Rory Gonzales-Gould for all fifteen runs before the game was ended prematurely because of softball’s eight-run rule. In addition to a seven-run second and six-run third, the Cats pounded out 14 hits and scored 13 earned runs.
“It’s an understatement to say we hit the ball really well,” coach Sharon Drysdale said. “They weren’t cheap hits. They were solid hits. Even those singles were rockets off the bat.”
Gonzales-Gould struggled all game with her control, walking five NU hitters. But while she might have had trouble hitting the broad side of a barn, the Cats had no such problem — two of their three home runs bounced off the side of McGaw Hall.
Erin Jancic hit a grand slam in the third — her first career home run — to make the game 13-1 and bury the Flames (38-21). In fact, Jancic said the grand slam was the first over-the-fence home run of her life.
Jancic wasn’t the only one erasing past history in Game 1 either. Catcher Gretchen Barnes has been struggling all year to get her average up to .200, but in the first game she slammed her third and fourth roundtrippers of the year.
“We just came out and attacked the ball really hard,” she said. “In my at-bats, she came at me with the same pitches every time. First pitch was away and I took it for a strike all three at-bats and the second pitch was up and in a little and I just hit them. Same exact series the entire time.”
Pitcher Lauren Schwendimann took advantage of the hit parade to notch her eighth win of the season. She also recorded six strikeouts in her five innings of work, despite pitching with the big lead.
“I try not to think about (the lead) because I don’t want to get too comfortable,” Schwendimann said. “I want to work on treating each inning the same regardless of the score.”
But unfortunately for the Cats, when Gonzales-Gould stopped pitching, NU stopped hitting. Flames sophomore Maral Binnebose befuddled the home team in the second game, allowing only one run on a Jancic single.
And while Schwendimann cruised in the first game, Brie Brown struggled in the early innings before settling down. In particular, she fell victim to some good hitting and some bad luck in the second inning.
Brown gave up two unearned runs — a direct result of two of the Cats’ three errors in the game. And those runs alone were enough to cost NU the game, since Binnebose had the Cats off guard all game long.
In addition, Binnebose had six assists in the game, stealing hit after hit from the NU batters.
Although they may not have scored 15 runs, the Cats probably would have put up some decent numbers on the scoreboard had it not been for the strong Illinois-Chicago defensive effort in the second game.
“We really weren’t able to generate any offense,” Drysdale said. “I wish we could have just played 14 innings straight.”
