Union’s softball team swept Lane College in a doubleheader at home with superb pitching by Gabby Morris and company and solid contact hitting from the entire lineup.
The Lady Bulldogs won the first game with a score of 14-1 and ended the second game with a score of 4-1.
In the first game of the day, the Bulldogs scored 14 of 15 hits. That gave them a 93% hitting percentage for the first game. After the first game, the batting took a little dive but still pulled the win out. Ashley Graves, a right-handed relief pitcher, saw this within her team and knew what was going on with the hitting.
“We got thrown off by the relieving pitcher,” said Graves. “We were hitting off the first pitcher easy because we could read her pitches. But when they put in the relieve pitcher we couldn’t read her as well due to her being a lefty. That threw us all off.”
While batting cooled down during the second game, the pitching stepped up and helped.
With batting taking a backseat in the second game, right-handed pitcher Gabby Morris saw 25 batters and had 12 strikeouts but walked three batters and allowed three hits. Solid defense kept Lane from scoring more than one run in the game. Lane ended the day with just two runs in total.
“I’ve been working on my hitting location and the spin,” said Morris. “The spin helps the effect of my pitch, and that helped with my rise ball. It helped a lot today during the game to help change the different planes for the ball.”
The Lady Bulldogs will play their last conference game against Christian Brothers on April 27 and 28 at Fesmire Field. They then will go into tournament play.