An impressive comeback against Kent State helped the Long Beach State softball team cap off a successful five-game run in the Mizuno Invitational at the 49er Softball Complex.
The 49ers began their season on Thursday with a 10-0 loss against the No. 12 team in the country, Kentucky. It was a rough first start for senior pitcher Erin Jones-Wesley, a first team All-Big West selection last year. Jones-Wesley lasted only three innings, giving up seven earned runs on eight hits.
“There’s just a lot more offense, I think, nowadays,” head coach Kim Sowder said.
With the 49ers set to play the second game of a double header against Santa Clara, Sowder said she thought it was important to move on quickly after a loss.
“I basically told [the team] that’s the way the game goes, and with this game, you have to have a short memory,” she said. “We have 15 minutes to turn around and get ourselves ready to go.”
The 49ers would do just that, defeating Santa Clara with a convincing 8-0 victory.
“I loved how they bounced back,” Sowder said. “This is a good team, and I don’t think the score of the first game indicated, you know, it just got away from us.”
Senior Sarah Carrasco, who went 2 for 2 against Kentucky, was very positive after the double header.
“We may have lost to Kentucky but we still get to compete at this level and it’s only our first game,” she said. “We have nowhere to go but up.”
The Mizuno Invitational would continue the following day, where the 49ers would again be victorious 8-0, this time against George Washington. Three 49ers had multi-hit games, and senior Karli Sandoval added a mammoth home run.
“Always the expectation is to win,” Sandoval said. “I was just like ‘base hit, base hit, base hit,’ and then it was a home run and I was like ‘Oh, that’s nice.’”
The 49ers would not find much success the following game against Kent State in a 3-2 loss. With the game tied and runners on the corners in the bottom of the fifth, Kent State was able to execute a successful double steal, leading to the game winning run.
“It’s a tough play to execute in that situation,” Sowder said.
The 49ers would rebound in a big way in their last game of the tournament. Down 6-1 in the bottom of the fifth, the 49ers exploded for six runs. Home runs from Sarah Carrasco and junior Ashley Holmes powered the Long Beach State comeback. The 49ers would eventually win 9-7 to improve to 3-2 on the season.
“I think it was a good weekend of learning,” Sowder said. “I don’t think we played our best, but it was definitely a nice win today to come back and finish the tournament like that.”
The 49ers will now prepare for their next tournament, the Easton Desert Classic in Las Vegas. LBSU’s first games will be played against Ohio State and Utah Valley on Friday.