The funk that so mysteriously came over the Northwestern softball team Sunday disappeared as quickly as it arrived Tuesday against Loyola-Chicago.
The Wildcats (24-20) struggled from the outset against the Ramblers (21-18), falling behind 4-0 in the third inning. But NU snapped out of its trance in time to score seven unanswered runs and win 7-4 at Anderson Field.
The Cats scored two in the fifth and added one more in the sixth. Then freshman Alyson Schulz stepped up with two runners on and deposited an Erin Smart offering over the leftfield fence to give NU the lead for good.
“The most important thing is that we now have confidence that even if we get down, we’re going to come back,” Schulz said. “We knew what we had to do to change things and we just had to apply that to this game. Basically, we did it. We did what we wanted to do.”
Schulz’s home run — a meteoric blast that left Anderson Field in a hurry — was her second of the year, and was especially sweet considering the circumstances.
“I’ve been wanting a situation like that for so long,” she said. “It was just a great feeling knowing that you can help your team out like that.”
The freshman third baseman wasn’t the only one hitting well. Erin Jancic followed up Schulz’s act with a seventh-inning solo shot to cap off the scoring.
Moreover, seven of the Cats’ nine starters collected hits against the Ramblers, continuing a recent NU trend — Sunday notwithstanding — of players knocking the ball all over the field.
The Cats hit the ball well all weekend until Sunday’s game, an 8-0 drubbing at the hands of Penn State.
“I think everybody’s really confident up at the plate,” leftfielder Rane Gunderson said. “Everybody knows they can get a hit, and batting is all mental. So confidence really has a lot to do with it.”
The Cats also showed signs of overcoming demons much greater than those presented by the brief slump. The Ramblers have given the Cats problems in the past — NU lost via the mercy rule last season as Smart shut down the Cats — and looked to be doing the same Tuesday.
But the Cats made Smart look anything but after she entered to relieve Loyola starter Carole Gorecki to start the fifth. Smart gave up singles to Jancic and Tami Jones, as well as a double to Jenn Shull before the Schulz blast a couple of pitches later.
Loyola coach Stephanie Henderson was forced to go back to Gorecki, but the damage was already done.
“It’s a big game for us because they’ve been tough for us to beat,” NU coach Sharon Drysdale said. “They got to us early, and we dug ourselves out of a hole. So I’m really happy with the comeback.”
Even though Drysdale was happy to win in comeback fashion, she knows the team can’t afford to fall behind against some teams.
With DePaul and Iowa looming as their final regular season opponents, the Cats will need to play well from the first pitch.
With a Big Ten tournament bid already locked up, the team needs to focus on honing its game for the postseason, which begins a week from Thursday.
“We got down against Penn State and we got down Tuesday again against Loyola and we’re getting ready to go into postseason play,” Drysdale said. “We need to make sure that if there’s something that we can do to correct that, we can because it gets tougher and tougher to do that as time goes along because you feel more and more pressure.”
Even though it wasn’t a textbook win, the Cats still came away from Tuesday’s game with a lot more confidence, free of the sour taste left over from the weekend.
“It was really important just to get our momentum back going again because we had a good streak going,” Gunderson said. “That loss to Penn State — we were down a little bit. It was really important to get right back out and get this win.
“I think we can do it again at DePaul, so that’ll give us good momentum into this weekend.”
