Jesse Talaugon: Make A Statement.

After sweeping Cal State East Bay at our home opener, we were anxious at another shot to prove ourselves. Although we came out with the four wins, we knew deep down that our performance was not representative of the team that we have worked to be.

We had faced San Francisco State earlier this February in the Best of the West Tournament in Turlock, but our team was lacking then too and we had owed them a much better performance on our end. Eager to host them at our home field, in front of our fans, we were ready to get a head start in the conference standings and rack on some more wins. Really cannot say enough about our pitching staff, who have really been the driving force in our teams success thus far and I truly believe they will give us the upper hand against all of our conference opponents, but it is long over due for our offense to step up and take some pressure off of our three pitchers via run support.

In game one, our offense was sporadic and we continued to struggle scoring early, but were able to come out on top. Game two seemed to mimic game one a little bit and both pitchers were dueling. We were constantly getting runners on base, even runners on early, but were struggling getting them in. Our need to capitalize with runners in scoring position was very apparent, but after twelve innings in the freezing cold, the game had to be carried over to Monday because we had eventually lost daylight. We felt very confident that we were going to protect our house and at the conclusion of Sunday evening, we had made it a team goal to end game two in one inning. Sunday morning we did exactly that, Jules took the mound and the defense had a solid three up, three down inning and then turned it over to the offense to seal the deal. In outstanding, crowd pleasing fashion, despite the rejection of her beloved bat, Ro (Rochelle Vanyi) came up clutch yet again and drilled the first pitch that she saw for a walk off jack to finish game two in our favor.

Game three started almost immediately after and our hits were coming in spurts and our inability to execute hurt us. We lost game three by one run, but were determined to end our weekend on a high note and win this series. Our team was in agreement that our first series, although it ended in our favor, was not what our team was about and we wanted to make a statement to our conference, to our competition and especially to the non-believers and that is what this final game was about…making a statement.

A change in the line up was the spark that changed the lull in our offense and we finally scored early. We put five runs on the board in the first inning and it sparked a hit parade, everybody was attacking and taking big hacks. We scored nine runs early to mercy San Francisco State in five innings. We ended the series on a good note and finally gave a bit of a sneak preview of what should be expected out of Sonoma State Softball this season. We take on Humboldt this weekend at their field and are expecting them to come out swinging, but we’re ready to do the same thing, in addition to our solid pitching staff continuing to do exactly what they do best.