The UCLA softball season did not start as expected.
Rain postponed four of Friday’s five Stacy Winsberg Memorial Tournament games.
Then No. 4 UCLA (3-1) finally took the field at Easton Stadium on Saturday night for its belated season opener, only to lose to Purdue (2-0) by a score of 2-1.
“I would rather have that loss now, and learn our lessons (now), because we’re planning on winning a championship,” coach Kelly Inouye-Perez said.
The Bruins took the field again later that night and rebounded with a sound 10-2 victory over Indiana (0-4). Sunday, the Bruins defeated Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (2-2) 6-1, then No. 25 San Diego State (2-2) 6-2 in extra innings on a walk-off grand slam by junior Kaila Shull.
But Saturday’s opening day loss was unexpected for a team that lost only nine games all of last season.
Sophomore pitcher Donna Kerr (2-1) began the game by throwing four perfect innings, including six strikeouts. Yet the Bruins were unable to take advantage of the stellar performance, stranding six baserunners in those same four innings.
Kerr walked the first batter she faced in the fifth inning before giving up a hit and two runs. Kerr finished with 10 strikeouts and allowed just one hit and one walk.
“It was unfortunate that the hit and the walk came in the same inning,” Kerr said.
The Bruins scored their lone run in the bottom of the seventh with two outs. Sophomore Katie Schroeder, usually a slap hitter, stayed in the box and knocked a 1-0 pitch over the outfield wall for her first career home run. It was just the Bruins’ second hit of the game.
“A lot of what we worked on this fall was if you fail, if you do something wrong, you just recover,” Schroeder said. “That’s exactly what we did the second game, we recovered and scored every inning.”
Schroeder hit her second home run of the day in UCLA’s victory over Indiana. Junior pitcher Whitney Baker (1-0) allowed two runs on four hits.
The Bruins carried their scoring outburst into Sunday afternoon, tagging Cal Poly for six runs. Every Bruin batter reached base and Schroeder hit her third home run in as many games. Kerr had a no-hitter broken up in the fifth inning and struck out 10 batters.
“Outstanding,” Inouye-Perez said of Kerr. “She did everything that I could ask for … through the whole weekend.”
The final game of the weekend was similar to the Purdue loss. The Bruins scattered several hits, but never managed to score on San Diego State. Fortunately for the Bruins, neither did the Aztecs.
The game went into extra innings and SDSU managed to score two runs in the eighth. But freshman left fielder Andrea Harrison responded in the bottom half of the same inning by hitting her first collegiate home run and tying the game at 2-2.
“I was hoping just to put the ball (into the outfield) and move the runner,” Harrison said. “I knew at contact that it was going out.”
“She’ll be able to take that with her from this point forward, to know that she has that ability, in those big moments,” Inouye-Perez said. “That was huge.”
After the Bruins held the Aztecs scoreless in the top of ninth, Shull stepped to the plate with the bases loaded. Shull launched a walk-off grand slam over the left-center field fence to cap the weekend.
“When I went out for the at-bat, I was just thinking put it out in the outfield, a (sacrifice) fly, anything in the outfield,” Shull said.