By late Saturday afternoon, a crowd of autograph-seekers had gathered around the UCLA softball players at Easton Stadium.
After all, the Bruins had a reason or two to show off their penmanship.
No. 7 UCLA (29-8, 4-4 Pac-10) hosted a pair of games against No. 3 Washington (31-7, 4-4) on Friday and Saturday and promptly swept the two-game series, winning 2-0 in 11 innings on Friday and 10-0 Saturday. The Bruins seem to have finally found their footing in Pac-10 play after having gone just 2-4 in their previous six games.
“Based on last weekend, this weekend was big for us,” freshman catcher Dani Yudin said. “Coming out with two wins keeps our momentum going forward and helps the team both physically and mentally.”
That is not to say that the victories came easy. The Bruins literally had to put in the extra effort in Friday’s thriller over the Huskies.
Through seven innings, junior pitcher Megan Langenfeld and Washington’s junior hurler Danielle Lawrie each kept the opposing team off the scoreboard, pushing the game into extra innings.
The score was still deadlocked 0-0 in the bottom of the 11th inning when sophomore shortstop Monica Harrison led off with a single to left and advanced to second on a fielding error by Husky senior left fielder Marnie Koziol.
Sophomore center fielder Katie Schroeder then moved Harrison to third with a sacrifice bunt before freshman left fielder Andrea Harrison belted a walk-off, two-run home run to left, nabbing the victory for the Bruins in dramatic fashion.
Although the team needed extra innings to score, coach Kelly Inouye-Perez gave credit to her players for hanging in the game, especially considering the quality of Lawrie’s pitches.
“It was really impressive how they continued to scrap it out,” Inouye-Perez said. “(Lawrie) has a very effective off-speed pitch that sets up everything else, and we saw some nasty ones in the game. But Andrea Harrison in particular did a great job in her at-bats … and jumped all over (the last pitch).”
On the other hand, Saturday’s game required no late-game heroics, not with Langenfeld returning to the circle to pitch the 100th no-hitter in UCLA history in a lopsided 10-0 affair.
The junior plowed through inning after inning, pounding the strike zone early and often in the pitch count and forcing the batters to play catch-up, all in just five innings of work.
“I just wanted to go out there and throw strikes and basically give our defense and our offense a chance to win the game,” Langenfeld said.
Despite pitching in back-to-back games, Langenfield did not feel any lingering fatigue.
“No, it felt good, it felt just like it did (Friday),” she said. “It was good to come out and get loose.”
The Bruins received a scare in the bottom of the fifth inning when sophomore first baseman GiOnna DiSalvatore went down in a heap after being struck in the helmet by an erratic pitch by Washington freshman Jenna Clifton.
“The good news is that the helmet did its job of absorbing the impact,” Inouye-Perez said. “But it wasn’t anything too extreme, and I wasn’t going to put her in a position to get back out there.”
Nor was DiSalvatore needed, as two batters later, junior third baseman Julie Burney drove a three-run home run to left field that ended the game and capped off a perfect weekend for the Bruins.