MARSHALL, Texas - Continuing their historic start at 30-1 and 21-0 in American Southwest Conference play following a sweep of LeTourneau University, the #2 East Texas Baptist University softball team look to extend their 10-game winning streak into Abilene, Texas, this weekend with three games against Hardin-Simmons University. This will mark the first of two trips to Abilene this season for ETBU.
In their previous series, the Tigers would put together a sweep over LETU by scores of 2-1, 6-2, and 6-2. All three pitchers of
Beatriz Lara,
Preslye Cox, and
Emily Deramus each picked up a win in a contest while
Mariah Delgado would pick up her first career home run in the series.
Corley Carpenter also contributed in the series with three hits in game three, which saw the Tigers rally from 2-1 down to score five runs following a weather delay.
Head coach
Janae Shirley saw a difference maker in her team after the weather delay, which led to the win to complete the sweep. "I think going into that game, they started to play scared to lose instead of playing to win," said Coach Shirley. "That mentality makes it hard to compete and you put too much pressure on yourself. The girls talked about it in the locker room and decided that's not how they're going to play and they went out there to leave it out on the field. They weren't going down without a fight. They did a good job of going out there, coming back, bringing some energy, executing, and doing the things they needed to do to make LeTourneau play and ended up scoring runs out of it."
While
Daniella Solis remains the highest batting leader hitting .398, Lara has 39 hits to go with 34 RBI on the team. She also is still unbeaten at 16-0 with an ERA of 1.20.
MacKenzie Anderson is still the only Tiger with 10 homers on the squad.
This weekend ETBU faces the Cowgirls of HSU. Last season, ETBU only allowed one run all series as they would sweep HSU by a combined score of 16-1. Currently third in the ASC at 11-7 to go with a 16-15 overall record, HSU is led by Kate Tovar, who has a team-high .422 batting average to go with 43 hits and 22 RBI along with three homers. Camille Scott (5-2) and Gabby Ortega (4-4) are one-tenth off each other in ERA with 4.23 and 4.24 ERA's respectively in the circle.
Beginning on Friday with a doubleheader at 1:00 PM, the series will end on Saturday at 12:00 PM.
