by Heather Morales
Staff Writer
Last Saturday, the softball team completely dominated Pomona-Pitzer in the second game of the doubleheader, 16-3, after losing the first game, 9-8, in eight innings.
It was a slow start for the Leopards in the first game as they had to claw their way back into it when the Sagehens took a 5-1 lead in the fifth inning.
La Verne answered back in the fifth when junior Liz Lomeli scored on a single by senior center fielder Kelly Perkins. She scored on a double by senior shortstop Loree Grey.
Before the end of the inning, Grey scored on a single by sophomore first baseman Angel Mejico and the score was 5-4.
Pomona increased its lead in the sixth, scoring three more runs to make it 8-4.
The bases were loaded in the seventh when Mejico stepped up to the plate and launched a home run to tie it 8-8 and send the game into extra innings.
The extra inning did not last long as the Sagehens were able to score one more run to defeat the Leopards 9-8.
After coming close to winning the first game, the Leopards pulled themselves together, came back and mauled the Sagehens in the second.
“We had a discussion between the games where I told them that we have to pull things together if we want to be competitive at our level,” said head coach Julie Kline.
In the first, La Verne’s defense kept Pomona off the bases, but Pomona could not keep La Verne from getting on.
“We executed our plays at the plate and we were more aggressive,” said Lomeli. “Our intensity level was higher (than in the first game).”
The Leopards sent 13 batters to the plate and scored nine runs to take an enormous lead over the Sagehens.
In the third inning, two more runs were scored when junior Jenna Bowman scored on a single by Perkins to make it 10-0. Bowman was on base on an error by Pomona first baseman Keeley Wynne.
The Sagehens scored their first runs in the fourth with two, but another big inning for the Leopards in the fourth sent 11 batters to the plate. They scored another six runs to make the score 16-2.
In the fifth the Sagehens scored another run but it was not enough to catch up to the lead that La Verne had built. The game was called on a mercy ruling after 4 1/2 innings and the Leopards came out on top, 16-3.
“We were pumped up and we had our heads in the game,” said Lomeli.
On Tuesday, the Leopards battled the Wartburg Knights, from Iowa. In the first game, La Verne came back from a 7-0 deficit to win the game 8-7.
The Leopards won the second game, 7-2. Grey and freshman Teka Clayton both had homeruns in the game.
“We realize that we’re going to have to score six or seven runs each game if we want to win games,” said Kline.
Today, La Verne plays No. 1 ranked Cal Lutheran at 2 p.m. in Thousand Oaks.
Journalism operations manager at the University of La Verne. Production manager and business manager of the Campus Times.