For Union’s baseball and softball teams, spring break consisted of numerous games, many of which were losses.
The Lady Bulldogs started off the weekend with a series against Valdosta State University. After losing all three games, they won two mid-week games against Miles College. Paige Taylor was on the mound all seven innings of the first game, and Hailey Cummings pitched the majority of the second game, giving up only one run in the fifth inning and leaving the final score at 6-1.
“We didn’t do great in the series against Valdosta,” said Hailey Cummings, junior exercise science major. “[But] our hitting started to come around at the very end of the Valdosta games and into the Miles games.”
The Lady Bulldogs went on to win one game out of a three-game series against the University of West Alabama.
Out of the seven games they played over spring break, the baseball team only had one victory—the second game in the series against Valdosta State University.
Teddie Christie pitched all seven innings of that game without giving up a single run, and Zach Wylie, Dylan Moore and Bailey Holbrook came through with RBIs that gave the Bulldogs a final score of 4-0. However, they still lost the series.
“Our pitching staff did really well most of the series [against Valdosta],” said Charlie Ellis, freshman political science major. “But we didn’t hit like we needed to. We left a lot of guys on base.”
While the University of West Alabama, a team ranked fourth in the conference, was tough competition, the games against Valdosta State University and Harding University should have been fairly easy wins for Union. Their hitting and occasionally their defense suffered.
“Obviously [it’s] not the result we wanted, but we’ve learned from it, and we’ll carry that into the second half of the season,” said Ryne Roper, junior elementary education major.
After losing the game against Harding University and both series against Valdosta State University and the University of West Alabama, it is clear that the team has some opportunities for improvement.
“We’ll pitch really well when we don’t hit well, and we’ll hit really well when we didn’t pitch well,” Ellis said. “The key is finding the balance.”
In spite of the team’s rough week, the players are optimistic about the future and see each new game as a chance to do better than they did the last time.
“Losing five in a row is hard, but the good thing about baseball is you can go right back out tomorrow and try again,” Roper said.
