The North Idaho College softball team swept the first doubleheader against the Colorado Northwestern Community College Spartans Friday at Memorial Field. The Cardinals won 3-0 the first game and 11-1 the second game.
“This was a big day for us because we needed to have some wins to get a momentum shift going,” NIC head softball coach Don Don Williams said. “It’s tough when you go on a little mini losing slump or streak. Any time that you can change the direction of those sails, that’s a good thing.”
Shanika Sawyer hit two two-run home runs in the second game for the Cardinals.
NIC’s Kylene Hatton doubled to lead off the bottom of the first inning and advanced to third base on a sacrifice bunt by Heather Bishop. Sawyer then hit one of her two home runs in the game to put the Cardinals up 2-0.
Freshman left fielder Kellsi Parson continued the NIC offensive surge in the third inning with an RBI double to left field that scooted past a diving Chanel Pace of Colorado Northwestern.
Williams said Parson, who also plays on NIC’s soccer team, was going to play on the softball team in the fall but Parson decided that it might be too difficult to play softball and soccer in college.
“So last weekend after Jenna (Krum) broke her leg, she (Parson) was here watching and I said ‘Hey, we need you. Would you consider it?’ and she decided that she would come help us for the last eight weeks.”
Jordan Zumwalt, NIC’s starting left fielder, has been out of the lineup with a herniated disk in her back.
Morgan Kuehl, who also plays on the NIC soccer team, is on the softball roster as well.
Hatton stepped into the batter’s box after Parson and knocked a two-run triple to right field past another diving effort by a Colorado Northwestern outfielder.
Sawyer blasted another two-run home run later in the inning, part of a six-run inning, to extend the Cardinals’ lead 9-0.
“One thing that we’ve been talking about all week is having offensive swings and being aggressive and that’s what we produce when we swing aggressively opposed to last weekend swinging defensively, swinging to not strike out rather than just swinging to get a hit,” Williams said. “We’ve been working on that all week in practice and it was nice to see it.”
After NIC scored two runs in the fourth inning, Colorado Northwestern got on the board in the fifth inning with an RBI single by Sydnie Swenson with the bases loaded.
NIC pitcher Hunter Allen struck out the next batter and forced a fly out to center field to end the game in the fifth inning due to the 10-run rule.
The first game consisted of three solo home runs by the Cardinals. Sophomore Kelsey LaVaute hit two of them and sophomore center fielder Amber Meyers hit the first one of the game in the second inning to give NIC a 1-0 lead.
LaVaute batted next and struck the ball over the right-center-field fence to give the Cardinals a 2-0 lead.
LaVaute struck again in the sixth inning with the game still stuck at 2-0 with a home run to left field.
“I was just up there trying not to think, just up there with the mentality to see ball, hit ball,” LaVaute said. “If I saw it and it looked good, swing at it.”
Sophomore pitcher Emily Perlich picked up the win for the Cardinals in the first game but said she wasn’t as sharp as she would like to be.
“Today it didn’t show but I actually had a pretty off day,” Perlich said. “I was struggling a little bit with my body awareness, my timing was off, but I just kept focusing on making small adjustments at a time, not making drastic changes between batters or anything.”
Perlich said the wins were important especially after the College of Southern Idaho swept NIC the weekend before.
“When you get in a rut of losing a lot of games, you kind of forget how to win after a while,” Perlich said. “It gets hard. A big thing though with our team is that we’re very close. We always pick each other up. We’re always very encouraging so we kept our spirits high considering the adversity that we faced.”
