Krista Colburn left Stanford with a bang.
In the senior’s last at bat ever at Stanford’s Smith Family Stadium and her final regular season faceoff against Cardinal ace Missy Penna, Colburn smashed her first home run of the season over the left field fence.
By that point in the top of the seventh, the game was already close to decided, but Colburn’s bomb served as the perfect ending to an already stellar weekend for the Bruins.
The No. 4 UCLA softball team (41-5, 13-2 Pac-10) took care of business in the Bay Area this weekend, sweeping three games versus No. 21 California (37-20, 5-10) and No. 7 Stanford (42-10, 7-8).
The Bruins defeated the Golden Bears 7-2 on Friday, and then won 1-0 and 4-1 decisions against the Cardinal on Saturday and Sunday, respectively.
“It was a great weekend,” sophomore pitcher Megan Langenfeld said. “We came out very prepared. We scored just about every first inning this weekend. And then just to hold them on defense, it was just an overall great weekend.”
As Langenfeld said, solid pitching was aided by early run support.
The Bruins jumped out to leads in the first inning of the Cal game and Sunday’s Stanford game, leaving pitchers Megan Langenfeld, Donna Kerr and Anjelica Selden to do the rest.
Langenfeld, who pitched a complete-game four-hitter on Friday and followed that performance with two-and-a-third innings of no-hit ball Saturday, said the run support was key.
“It’s very important for us to kind of jump ahead early,” Langenfeld said. “As pitchers, it is just nice knowing that you already have the run support you need to finish off a ball game. It’s very helpful to have the lead going into the second inning.”
Langenfeld pitched multiple days, in part because of a scary moment from Tuesday’s Olympic exhibition.
In the middle of Tuesday’s game, a throw to second in a pick-off attempt hit Selden in the head, and she was on the ground for some minutes.
Selden soon recovered and even continued to pitch during that game, but didn’t take the circle as a precautionary measure on Friday. But her three-hitter Sunday seemed to dispel any doubts about her ability to play the rest of the season.
Langenfeld said the team’s success this weekend should give them momentum going into next weekend’s series against the Arizona teams. The Bruins’ only two losses against Pac-10 teams came against No. 1 Arizona State and No. 8 Arizona.
“This helps give us a lot of energy for this weekend,” Langenfeld said. “It will be a great weekend with three really good games. We’re going to be playing two really talented teams, so hopefully this momentum will carry on and hopefully we’ll come out with three W’s this weekend.”