As the scoreboard remained at 0-0 at the bottom of the fifth inning, Chelsea O’Connor walked to the plate determined to put points on the board for the Rams.
“All I was thinking about was hitting something hard and getting it down for a ground ball or line drive,” O’Connor said. “Their pitcher was throwing a lot of rise balls so it was just a matter of getting it down.”
In its Thursday afternoon matchup against the University of Nevada Wolfpack, O’Connor made the first move of the game to put CSU ahead of their opponents. As she drove the ball into left field, O’Connor was able to bring in two runs for the Rams.
After that play, the rest of the game was history. Throughout the rest of the fifth inning, Ashlie Ortega and Larisa Petakoff managed to bring in two more runs for the Rams, putting CSU up 5-0 going into the sixth inning.
“A lot of us just started picking better pitches to swing at and then the game started falling in our way,” O’Connor said. “Those runs just gave us that confidence and then we just continued to get good hits and it was just that momentum that we needed to get through the last few innings.”
Even though the Rams were eventually able to run away with the game, much of the game was toe-to-toe. Both teams matched each other’s ferocity and determination as each hit and each play was matched by the opposing team.
As the Rams head into their next two games against the Wolfpack, they do so without underestimating this team’s ability to match everything CSU dishes out.
“We got a good look at their hitters today and they definitely are aggressive and they battle it out and we’ve kind of known that about them,” head coach Jen Fisher said. “Today we really only saw one of their pitchers, but they’ve got two more really good pitchers so we’re trying not to be over confident. We want to walk away from this knowing that we did our job, but we have more work to do in these next two games.”
Collegian Reporter Hannah Cornish can be reached at sports@collegian.com and on Twitter at @HMCornish.
Top performers:
Shae Rodriguez: 2 hits, 1 run
Kendal Butterfield: 1 hit, 2 runs
Chlesea O’Connor: 1 hit, 1 run
Haley Hutton: 1 hit, 1 run
Ashlie Ortega: 1 hit, 1 run
