The Ball State University softball team traveled to Kalamazoo, Mich., this weekend to play division leader Western Michigan University with one consistent streak.
After splitting a double-header with Northern Illinois University on Friday, the Cardinals (9-16, 3-5 Mid-American Conference) had won one game and lost one game in its three MAC series. However, when the Cardinals left the field on Sunday afternoon, its streak had been snapped for the worse as Ball State blew late-inning leads in both games of its two-game series with the Broncos (18-10, 5-1 MAC).
"Western Michigan never gives up and it's that mind-set which they have of refusing to lose," coach Terri Laux said. "I am not happy with our offensive performance against [the Broncos] and I think that we learned that you can never get enough runs no matter what the score is."
In the first game, the Cardinals led 2-1 heading into the bottom of the seventh and were only three outs away from being one game out of first place when pitcher Abby Zollerman surrender a solo, game-tying home run to Katie Niemi to start the inning.
After the next batter singled and was moved over to second on the sacrifice bunt, Laux pulled Zollerman in favor of senior Nicki Hellem to face Western Michigan clean-up hitter Amanda Heckman.
The ensuing at-bat proved to be play of the game as Heckman hit a walk-off home run off of Hellem to win the game 4-2.
In game two, the Cardinals, led by catcher Abby Gross' grand-slam in the fourth inning, took a commanding 8-4 led heading into the bottom of the fifth.
However, much like they did in game one, Western Michigan rallied back by scoring one run in the fifth inning and four runs in the sixth inning off freshman pitchers Laura Mersch and Zollerman to win the game 9-8.
For Zollerman, Sunday's game marked her fifth appearance in eight days as the freshman pitcher pitched 13.2 innings in almost a week.
"She may have been tired but you have to look at the teams she was facing. All of them were good hitting teams," Laux said. "Teams know that she is going to throw the [change-up] and that is something we need to work on, but she has a good, young arm and we plan on using her again."
One of the biggest problems for Ball State this weekend was its defense as in the four games this weekend BSU had a total of nine errors, including five errors in Sunday's loss.
"A lot of those errors were difficult plays or just stupid mistakes," Laux said. "Typically we play good defense with no errors and it will be something we need to address at practice this week."
With this loss, the Cardinals now fall to four games back of first place in the West division, but for Laux it is still too early to press the panic button.
"There is still plenty of time left for us to come back," Laux said. "The great thing about this division is that you can never count anyone out and we're definitely not counting ourselves out."
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