Lady Spartans Finish Home Schedule with Sweep

The Lady Spartans improved their overall record to 18-4 and are now 12-4 in the Southern Division of the Minnesota College Athletic Conference (MCAC).

"We were able to take advantage of some mistakes by them and I really like the adjustments we made at the plate in the second game" commented Steve King, head coach of the Lady Spartans. "Seeing them make an adjustment to a pretty good pitcher shows some maturity. We really limited their scoring opportunities by playing good defense and our pitcher getting key outs early in the games". 

In game one, Riverland jumped out to a 1-0 lead on a rare bases loaded walk by Lady Spartan pitcher Tarryn Justesen. After that it was all Lady Spartans. They batted around in the second inning scoring six runs highlighted by a bases loaded inside the park grand slam by Doranna Blascyk. Blascyk drove the ball to deep right field and her speed showed as she circled the bases and scored standing up to give the Lady Spartans a 6-1 lead. 

The Lady Spartans scored 8 runs in the third and added another in the fourth for a 15-1 lead. Justesen pitched a perfect top of the fifth and the Lady Spartans won in five innings 15-1. Justesen pitched a complete game striking out six.

In game two, the Lady Spartans did a nice job of jumping on the first pitch and adding to their leads. Haley Poehler singled to lead off the Lady Spartan first, stole second and third, and scored on an Amber Boese fly ball for a 1-0 Lady Spartan lead. They broke the game open in the third scoring five times on RBI hits by Poehler, a booming double to center by Boese that just missed being a homerun, followed by RBI hits by Ally Jensen, Lindsey Dierks, and Cailey Bryant for a 6-0 lead. 

The hot hitting continued into the fourth. Poehler tripled down the left field line, Blascyk singled to score Poehler and promptly stole second, Boese hit another double to score Bkascyk and Sidney Imsande had an RBI single to give the Lady Spartans a 9-0 lead.

Riverland did score two runs in the top of the fifth to make the score 9-2 but the Lady Spartans finished the game off in their half of the inning. Amber Boese collected her third hit of the game and her fourth RBI as she singled to knock in Nicole Anderson and the Lady Spartans won by the eight run rule for the second time in the day.

Tarryn Justesen once again picked up both victories in the double header. On the day, she pitched 10 innings and struck out 10 Riverland batters. Tarryn improves to 14-3 and is currently third in the nation in strikeouts. Amber Boese and Doranna Blascyk each had four runs batted in on the day.

The Lady Spartans have a tough week of divisional play ahead of them. They travel to Cambridge to play a very good Anoka Ramsey team on Tuesday and play the 5th ranked team in the nation, St. Cloud Technical and Community College, on Thursday. Both games begin at 3:00.