After their successful spring break trip, the Maroons headed into a week of double headers against some tough teams. To start off their first week of regular season play, the Maroons took to the road on Tuesday to face off against neighboring competitor Lake Forest College in Lake Forest. It was a tough day for the Maroons as they fell to the Foresters in both games 10–4 and 8–0.
The first three innings of the first game were tough for the Maroons, as they were down by four at the end of the third inning. In the fourth, the Maroons began to mount a comeback thanks to first-year Colleen Bennett’s single to centerfield, which brought in two runs on an error. The Lake Forest squad responded, putting six runs on the board to bring the score at the end of the fourth inning to 10–3 in favor of the home squad. Chicago was only able to post one more run due to first-year Serena Moss’s single to kick off the fifth inning. Moss was able to score herself, using her extreme speed for an impressive double steal. But this was still not enough, as the Maroons fell by a score of 10–4 in the first game of the day.
In the second game of the doubleheader, the team fell victim to another round of solid hitting by the Foresters, who tallied four homeruns to finish the game 5–0.
Fortunately, the South Siders saw better results in their doubleheader at Kalamazoo College on Friday. With this pair of wins, the squad improved to 10–3 for the season.
In the first game of the day, first-year Maeve Garvey came out swinging, hitting her first homerun of her collegiate career in the third inning to bring the score to 4–1. First-year pitcher Jordyne Prussak pitched all seven innings, improving to a 5–0 record on the mound this season.
In Friday’s second game, Chicago tallied a season high of 15 hits, along with an impressive four stolen bases. First-year Carly Schulz went 3-for-4 hitting, including an RBI single in the first.
The Maroons saw mixed results on Sunday against UW–Whitewater to finish off the week’s series of doubleheaders. While the squad fell in the first game of the day 4–2, it rallied to take the second 6–4 after a dominant first inning of play.
“I think the team definitely brought more energy to the second game,” first-year Schulz said. “We found out pretty quickly that beating Whitewater, an offensively solid team, would require more consistency in our hitting and mental approaches than what we showed in the first game. So, starting the second game with more intensity as a team made everything else—our hitting, defense, and pitching—fall into place.”
The doubleheader also marked the first time that the Maroons played at home this season, making it an exciting day, especially for Schulz and her fellow first-years.
“Playing at home for the first time this season was really exciting,” Schulz said. “By the second game, we were all as comfortable as we should’ve been with the extra energy on/around the field, and I think we were able to harness that energy to pull off a good win against Whitewater.”
This week, the squad will be preparing for the first weekend of UAA play at Case Western Reserve in Cleveland where they will be playing both Case and NYU.
Schulz said, “I think we’re all going to focus a lot on refining what we need to work on individually—mainly things like hitting and pitching—alongside getting ourselves in positive, team-centric mindsets for this weekend.”
The Maroons will play NYU on Saturday at 11 a.m., followed by a game against Case at 1 p.m. They will face the same competition on Sunday with a 9 a.m. game against NYU, followed by a 1 p.m. game against Case to close out the first weekend of UAA competition.
