Before the Northwestern softball team’s game against Purdue Sunday, tears rolled down senior Brooke Siebel’s face – they were both tears of sorrow and tears of joy.
The 2000 Big Ten player of the year – sidelined for the entire season with a stress fracture in her hip – could only watch NU’s final conference home game as the Wildcats paid tribute to Siebel and teammate Stacey Austin on senior day.
“This is the end of an era for me,” Siebel said with a grin. “I can’t grasp the fact that it’s all over – it was hard to adjust to that.”
The mix of smiles and frowns summed up NU’s weekend, as the Cats again split a set of Big Ten games – beating Indiana twice, 4-2 and 5-1, on Friday and dropping heartbreakers to Purdue on Saturday and Sunday.
NU fell 2-1 in each of its hard-fought games against the Boilermakers. Game 1 ended in controversy, as NU leftfielder Jessie Wellnitz was called out at home plate. Wellnitz claimed she clearly beat Purdue shortstop Katie Crabtree’s relay throw.
“I don’t like to blame a game on an umpire,” Wellnitz said, “but I just thought the call was ridiculous. I didn’t even think that it was a close play. It felt like more of a nightmare.”
The bad dreams didn’t end there for NU.
In Game 2 against the Boilermakers, Purdue pitcher Meagan Dooley held the Cats to just one hit and Crabtree came up big both defensively and offensively – putting out NU hitters at first time after time and going 3-for-3 at the plate.
“We faced a shortstop that was in a zone,” NU coach Sharon Drysdale said. “Instead of adjusting and going away from her, we kept trying to say, ‘I can hit it by her.'”
NU’s hitting woes may also have resulted from the Cats’ impatience, Drysdale added. She said the Cats went “fishing” for questionable pitches that were outside and that they may have been trying to do too much at the plate with their families in attendance.
NU’s lone run in the second game came from Austin in her final conference game at Anderson Field. Shrugging off the pain of a hurt shoulder, Austin later scored on a Purdue error.
“I don’t tend to be the sentimental type,” Austin said. “What was important was winning the game first and all that senior stuff later. It sucked that we lost. That was just plain bitter.”
Bitterness aside, NU had reason to celebrate after winning the opening game of its doubleheader against Indiana. The win gave Drysdale her 700th career victory, making her only the 16th Division I softball coach to reach that plateau. She also became the third-winningest coach in Big Ten history.
Drysdale gave the team much of the credit. She said the Cats did exactly what she was looking for against the Hoosiers.
Although the Cats fell behind in the fifth inning of the first game and started sluggishly in Game 2, Drysdale said they came back with solid defense and key hits. She pointed to the consistency that NU had throughout the order, getting hits from all nine of its batters in the order, including pinchhitter Katie Gross, who picked up her first hit of the year.
NU shortstop Robyn Pettinger came through with a key RBI double to spark a three-run fifth inning in the first game against Indiana.
Pettinger left the Hoosiers scratching their heads when she snuck home from third base on a play that NU had practiced earlier in the week – the batter rounds first and heads to second without stopping after her hit, causing the defense to turn its head while the runner on third tiptoes home.
Pettinger flexed her muscles defensively as well. In the second inning of Game 2, she lunged to grab a potential Indiana hit out of the air.
“It’s pretty much just instinct,” Pettinger said of the jaw-dropping grab. “All I thought about the whole time was catching that ball and not letting it drop. It’s just the will to get that ball (that) makes you go horizontal.”
The Cats’ wins versus Indiana kept them in the race to be one of six teams to advance to the Big Ten tournament.
But the losses to Purdue left NU with some ground to make up – they still face the conference’s leading teams, Michigan and Iowa, on the road in the next two weeks.
“We have to beat the biggies if we’re going to go anywhere,” Drysdale said.
