Softball
Northwestern’s road trip to South Bend, Ind., went perfectly according to plan — until the bottom of the seventh.
Against Notre Dame on Tuesday, the Wildcats did not give up one earned run and went into the bottom of the final inning protecting a 3-0 lead.
They left with a 4-3 loss.
“We just got timid and we basically gave the game away,” said junior catcher Jamie Dotson. “I would call it bad luck, but it’s happened to us more than a couple times this year, so I think it’s something more than bad luck.”
The Cats (14-11) now have lost two straight mid-week, non-conference games, while riding a 14-game Big Ten winning streak.
“I think that our team has a lot of energy on the weekends and we’re really good at getting up for conference games,” junior pitcher Courtnay Foster said. “During the mid-week it’s hard to juggle school and softball at the same time. Obviously this is the week during midterms, and it’s hard to stay focused when you’ve got so much other stuff going on.”
Foster, who had come in for relief in the sixth inning, did not start the seventh off well. She hit one batter and walked another to put two runners on base.
The next batter crushed a double over the head of left fielder Katie Logan and off the wall. Though the throw home was way ahead of Notre Dame’s lead runner and backed her up to third, Dotson’s error on the catch allowed the runner to score and brought the Fighting Irish to within two.
Foster walked the next batter and starter Eileen Canney re-entered the game.
Canney started quickly when she forced a ground ball to freshman Kelly Odell, but Odell, who was charging hard to her right, had the ball bounce off her glove, which allowed another run to score.
Canney then forced an infield fly against the next batter to bring the Irish up to their final out. But the next batter, Notre Dame junior Sara Schoonaert, hit a walk-off, two-RBI single to win the game for the Irish.
“I put a couple of people on base — that didn’t get us off to a good start,” Foster said. “And we didn’t come up with the big plays when we needed to, and that’s what lost the game for us.”
The game started off looking like a pitching battle between Canney and Notre Dame pitcher Heather Booth, who both shut out their opponents going into the fifth inning.
But when Notre Dame pulled Booth from the game to start the fifth, NU’s bats woke up. Sophomore Katie Logan started off the inning with an infield single and freshman Stephanie Churchwell continued her hot streak with a blast to right field that hit off the top of the wall.
The ball looked for sure to be a home run but instead was only a double for Churchwell. Logan advanced to third on the hit. After senior Erin Mobley struck out, sophomore Garland Cooper had her second hit of the game to score Logan and give the Cats a 1-0 lead.
“I was just trying to produce,” Cooper said. “Especially with runners in scoring position.”
With coaches Kate and Caryl Drohan unable to attend the game because of a family issue, pitching coach Tori Nyberg and hitting coach Jaime Clark managed NU and made their first major decision of the game when they brought Foster into the game to start the sixth inning.
Foster had no trouble with the Notre Dame batters in the sixth, and the offense stepped up to provide a cushion in the seventh.
Freshman Darcy Sengewald, who had a terrific game defensively with four assists, started the inning off by drawing a walk. After Logan struck out, Churchwell hit a double into left field, scoring Sengewald. Churchwell advanced to third on the throw home. Mobley was unable to score Churchwell, but Cooper came through again with another RBI, which gave the Cats a 3-0 cushion going into the disastrous bottom of the seventh.
Nyberg said she does not believe that the team went into the final inning lackadaisical, but said it may be better that this type of loss came before the postseason.
“We need to learn from this so that it doesn’t happen again,” Nyberg said. “Hopefully this is the last wake-up call.”
Reach Paul Tenorio at [email protected].
