For the second straight weekend, the University of Wisconsin softball team came out of their tournament with an unblemished 4-0 record.
Due to weather complications, there were a few schedule changes. Nonetheless, Wisconsin still put together multiple quality performances throughout the weekend. The success started with a doubleheader against Purdue Fort Wayne at the Hoosier Classic, hosted by Indiana University.
As the weather begins to heat up in the Midwest, the Badgers’ pitching staff did so as well this past weekend. The staff only allowed three runs over four games. It started with the right arm of Gabi Salo. She looked to carry the momentum from her performance against Villanova into game one this weekend.
Saturday morning, Salo struck out 11 Mastodons in seven innings, and with a little help from Katie Keller and Kayla Konwent in the run production department, Wisconsin went on to get a quick 3-0 victory in game one. This was Salo’s first complete game of her career and the season.
Softball: Badgers roll through weekend, improve to 10-6 on season
As players accomplished feats, coaches did the same for Badgers. Head coach Yvette Healy, the winningest coach in UW softball history, added to her record by winning career game No. 500.
Later in the day, the red and white were rematched with Purdue Fort Wayne and continued to flex their muscles on the mound. This time, the dominant performance came from the combination of Wisconsin’s two best arms — Maddie Schwartz and Paytn Monticelli.
Schwartz threw three innings in her only appearance of the weekend, and Monticelli finished the last four and got the win for the Badgers. The two pitchers combined for 12 strikeouts and once again shut out the Mastodons.
Led by Konwent and Molly Schlosser, who accounted for three hits and three RBIs, the Badger offense generated five runs and shut out Purdue Fort Wayne 5-0.
On Sunday, after 20 straight innings of shutout softball, dating back to last weekend against Villanova, the Wisconsin pitching staff finally gave up a run to IUPUI. Fortunately for the Badgers, it was only two, and the offense stepped up later in the game to pull away from the Jaguars.
Brooke Kuffel had multiple hits, and Schlosser continued to stay hot with a two-hit game. The highlight of the shortened game was the bat of true freshman Emily Bojan. She drove in three runs in the first at-bat of her collegiate career with a double to deep left-center field which walked off IUPUI, and the Badgers went on to win 11-2 in six innings due to run rule. Wisconsin tallied 10 hits as a team and plated six of those runs in the final inning.
A couple of hours later, the bats continued to stay hot for the red and white against a Big Ten foe — the Indiana Hoosiers.
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Wisconsin scored in four of the five innings against Indiana’s four pitchers. They put up crooked numbers in two of them, including six in the third and four in the fourth.
Skylar Sirdashney, Peyton Bannon, Rylie Crane and Christaana Angelopulos each had multi-hit games for the Badgers, and the team combined to have 15 hits in five innings. The offense erupted for 12 runs in total and dominated the Hoosiers — a representation of the whole weekend.
Monticelli, after giving up a run in the first inning, shut down Indiana the rest of the way in her first taste of Big Ten action.
Wisconsin won 12-1 and outscored their opponents 31-3 on the weekend. They also increased their winning streak to eight games and improved their overall record to 10-6.
The Badgers have one more weekend of non-conference tournament play before the conference season begins. They will head to Austin, Texas, next weekend to match up against Texas State, Texas and Alabama.
