by Christine Owen
Staff Writer
Although it maintained its winning record, the University of La Verne softball team was unable to score in both games of a doubleheader Saturday at Wheeler Park against Cal Baptist.
Those in attendance on Saturday watched the Leopards fall consecutively to CBU, 8-0 and 3-0.
“I do not think we focused as well as we should have. We expected to be competitive, but our effort did not show that,” said head coach Julie Kline.
According to Kline, the absence of injured players played a major role in the Leopards’ losses Saturday.
“We have some injuries to key players. We need to get healthy in order to compete at the level we want to compete at,” Kline said.
Another reason the Leopards struggled on Saturday was that due to so many injured players, nearly everyone was playing in different positions to suffice for their absence.
“I think it might have been awkward for some players to be in some positions,” said freshman infielder Augie Torres.
“Last weekend I think that it was honestly just maybe lack of confidence with people in new places. We’ve been playing a lot so I think we’re probably just a little bit tired, a little bit hurt,” said freshman pitcher Amanda Stutevoss.
Kline correlated the double loss with the effort her team put forth.
“The outcome was a direct result of our effort. This team controls its destiny,” she said.
Cal Baptist is not a member of the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC), so Saturday’s losses will not affect the Leopards’ SCIAC ranking. Kline said that her team is currently one game behind Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, which leads the conference. La Verne is 10-9 overall, 10-4 in SCIAC.
Tomorrow the Leopards face CMS in a doubleheader.
Stutevoss said, “We need to beat Claremont. Coach Kline always says that we have the best team this year, player for player. I think that our coach’s expectations are so high that we just want to fulfill them.”
