TOP-SEEDED RAMS COME OUT ON TOP
DECATUR, Ala. – A career high 16
strikeouts by Mobile’s senior pitcher Missy Passley set the tone
for the Rams’ tournament opener as they defeated Walsh
University (Ohio) (39-17) 6-0 in first round action of the 23rd
annual NAIA softball national tournament held at the Wilson
Morgan Softball Complex in Decatur, AL.
In just her first season as a head coach,
Becky Clark has reached the half-century mark in wins, a plateau
that most coaches don’t reach until their second season of
coaching if they’re lucky. Improving their season mark to
50-5-1, the Rams will now get set to play Olivet Nazarene
University who defeated Oklahoma Baptist 5-2 in earlier play.
“We haven’t looked at Olivet yet,” Coach
Clark said. “We just talked about what adjustments we have to
make based upon what we did this game.”
The adjustments will be few as the Rams
came out firing on all cylinders. Scoring six runs on eight hits
the Rams capitalized on most of their opportunities. A two-run
homerun by Rams leading hitter Maria Soto put Mobile up 2-0 in
the top of the third inning and sent a message to the other
nineteen teams in the tournament.
“We came out really juiced,” a pleased Rams
coach said. “They were really pumped and really ready to go
which is awesome. I think that’s a good problem to have. Once
they settled, we slowed things down a little bit and it worked a
lot better for us.”
An RBI triple by Brenda Box (3-for-4) in
the top of the sixth inning and an early run at the tournament
record of strikeouts in a single game (set in 1989 by Oklahoma
City’s Andrea Drake) by Passley (26-4) revealed a glimpse of
Mobile’s arsenal. Passley also only gave up two hits and one
walk in seven innings of work.
“Missy obviously had a great night,” Coach
Clark said. “Maria did a great job and so did Box to drive in
those runs in. I’ll tell you what set that up was Winter going
0-for-2 and working her way back up and putting the ball in play
and getting on off an error.”
Walsh will drop into the loser’s bracket
and face the winner of Game 13 tomorrow at 1 p.m. as the
top-seeded Rams won’t play until 5 p.m.
“This performance is a “10”, it’s a win,”
the pleased Rams coach said. “I thought we did really well
considering this was our first game and our adrenaline was
flowing and were really juiced. I think it’s a great
performance.”
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