On Tuesday, the No. 4 UCLA softball team emerged victorious, which was just fine with Bruin coach Kelly Inouye-Perez.
But she was not fine with the umpires.
UCLA (24-3) defeated Notre Dame (6-7) at Easton Stadium. The 3-1 score followed a pair of home runs and solid pitching.
But the Bruins’ coach was not completely content after her team’s 24th win.
“It gets to a point where you have to voice that there has to be a standard, to a certain degree, because (umpires) can’t affect the game to that degree,” Inouye-Perez said after the victory. She complained about poor umpiring, which she said has been pretty consistent for the past three weeks.
One incident in particular drew the coach’s ire.
In the second inning, with the game tied 1-1, freshman Andrea Harrison led off with a single to left field. Inouye-Perez inserted sophomore Lauren Mirabal as a pinch runner. Two pitches later, sophomore Monica Harrison knocked a ball up the middle on a hit-and-run. Mirabal ran by Irish second baseman Sadie Pitzenberger, who bobbled the ball and missed the tag, but was still able to get Harrison at first.
In the meantime, Mirabal, who had been called safe on Pitzenberger’s missed tag, wandered off second base, presuming she’d been called out. She and Irish first baseman Christine Lux realized this at the same time. Mirabal dove back to the bag, but was tagged out by shortstop Katie Fleury. Inouye-Perez almost ran out to talk to third-base umpire Tony Cooper, who was covering second on the play.
“When (Mirabal) dove to go back to the bag, (Pitzenberger) was between her and the bag and didn’t allow her a path to the bag,” Inouye-Perez said.
“The umpire said she didn’t get back to the bag. How could she? … I was arguing the (obstruction) rule, and I believe that he was incorrect.”
Despite Mirabal’s running controversy, the Bruins played decently. Sophomore Katie Schroeder hit her ninth home run of the season to give the Bruins a 1-0 lead in the first; junior Kaila Shull hit her seventh homer and scored another run on Julie Burney’s single in the fourth to stretch it to 3-1. But the real highlight was UCLA’s pitching.
Sophomore pitcher Donna Kerr (13-3) struck out 10 without a walk. This was after a difficult loss on Sunday, when Kerr walked five to take the upset loss to Long Beach State.
“When she puts herself behind and has to bring balls over the plate, you’ll see that opponents stand a chance,” Inouye-Perez said about Kerr. She added that when Kerr gets ahead in the count, “she puts herself in a position to succeed and get the strikeout because she’s so unpredictable with all the weapons that she has.”
Kerr threw 18 first-pitch strikes to her 25 batters. Notre Dame’s only run of the game came after Kerr gave up back-to-back doubles in the top of the second.
“The changeup that (Linda Kohan) hit for the double, I put it a little high, so I missed that one,” Kerr said.
“(With Christine Lux) it was on the corner, but I guess I could have taken it more off the corner. She just hit it.”
The Bruins will take a break from their game schedule for UCLA’s finals week, but will return with a doubleheader at Cal State Bakersfield on Mar. 22.