March 22, 2009
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- SoftBlog
IOWA CITY – The University of Iowa softball team rolled past South Dakota, 9-0, in five innings Sunday in the first game of a doubleheader Sunday at Pearl Field. The game marked Iowa’s first home contest of the season, and the first official game at Pearl Field since the field was flooded last summer.
Iowa’s offense pounded out nine runs on 10 hits, while taking advantage of four South Dakota errors.
The Hawkeyes started off strong, plating four runs in both the first and second innings for a commanding 8-0 lead. In the first, junior Taylor Leichsenring reached on an error and scored on an RBI double by senior Colleen McGlaughlin. Later in the inning, junior Katie Brown drove in two runs with a single to center. Freshman Liz Watkins ended the scoring with an RBI single to right, scoring Brown.
Iowa’s second inning was more of the same. McGlaughlin collected the first hit of the frame with a double, followed by a Chelsey Carmody single. Brown drove in another run with a single, and Watkins did the same one batter later. Iowa scored its eighth run of the game off a South Dakota error.
Sophomore Jenny Schuelke recorded a pinch-hit RBI single in the fourth that scored Carmody, who recorded a double down the right field line earlier in the inning.
McGlaughlin, Carmody, Brown and Watkins each had two hits, while Brown and Watkins drove in three runs each.
Senior Brittany Weil was one batter away from perfection, tossing a five-inning, one-hit shutout. Weil gave up the lone hit of the game in the second inning and struck out 11 of the 17 batters she faced. She now has 910 career strikeouts and is just 37 K’s away from becoming Iowa’s all-time strikeout leader.