Inside Pitch with LC: WCWS Edition (Day Four)
5/30/2015 12:00:00 AM | Softball
May 30, 2015
The team poses by a fountain during their downtown walk.
Junior catcher Lauren Connell will be blogging throughout the softball season to let Michigan fans in on what happens outside of the field of play. This week she takes "The Inside Pitch with LC" on the road to Oklahoma City for a daily blog at the Women's College World Series.
WCWS Day Four (Friday, May 29)
After our big first win against Alabama on Thursday night (May 28), we were able to sleep in and rest up before our 8:30 p.m. game against UCLA the following day. A late-night game meant a great deal of down time during the day, which is both a curse and a blessing. It allowed us to relax and recover from the previous night's game while also giving us a massive amount of time to think about the upcoming game and potentially get anxious and nervous. We slept in and took a leisurely breakfast before meeting as a team around lunchtime to take a walk around the hotel. Hutch wanted us to get out of the hotel, get a change of scenery and stretch our legs during a stroll through the local Botanical Gardens.
After our walk, many of us took over the hotel lobby as we hung out with our friends and family. Waiting. Sitting. Talking. Watching ESPN. More waiting. Hutch planned for us to walk to a late-afternoon dinner at a nearby restaurant in an attempt to break up our day and get us out of the hotel yet again. We were all more than happy to get some fresh air and see a sight other than the hotel lobby or the four walls of our hotel rooms. After dinner, it was finally time to put on our uniforms, swipe on our eye black and head over to OGE Energy Field.
As we walked onto the field after the game prior to ours ended, the stadium was already packed. Fans were not filling in -- it was already elbow-to-elbow. The UCLA fans were almost as loud and rowdy as ours. After waiting around all day for the highly anticipated game, we immediately knew we were going to have to scrape and claw our way to a victory. Games against UCLA have always been an intense rivalry for our team, as many of our players are from California and have grown up playing against most of the Bruins. One of our coaches, Jen Brundage, is actually a UCLA softball alumna herself. We were hungry for a win.
After the bottom of the first inning, the scoreboard did not look promising for our team as UCLA took an early 3-0 lead. In college softball, sometimes three runs is all it takes to pull off a win. However, in the dugout, the run deficit did not stifle our team's energy at all. Every member of Team 38 had a sense of belief and confidence that our hitters would be able to pick up our defense, and that we did. Each hit, each base and even each ball that the opposing pitcher threw fueled our team's energy as our dugout was as loud and wild as ever with each pitch. We also stayed loud to help our defense as well. "Turn up for strikes" was the dugout's motto as Haylie Wagner pitched our team's way to defeat the Bruins 10-4.
During Hutch's late-night postgame speech at the locker room, she had two pieces of exciting news for us. First, we had earned a day off, which would be spent free of softball. Second, and more importantly, we were getting PIZZA!! Yes, actual pizza. When we arrived back at the hotel around midnight, we had pizza waiting for us as postgame nourishment. #SprinkleTheCheese. After what felt like the longest day of the season, we finally headed to bed knowing that we could sleep in and enjoy a day off the following day. Stay tuned to find out what we did during our off day in tonight's blog about day five of the Women's College World Series.
Go Blue!
LC
