Senior Suzy Brookshire had a historic day at the plate, hitting three home runs in her three at bats, becoming the first Long Beach softball player in history to do so.
Long Beach State softball (7-4, 3-0 Big West) continued their dominant conference start, defeating the UC Riverside 7-3 Monday and sweeping the weekend series.
Senior ace Kellie White started the game for the Beach after an impressive month of March, where she has pitched into at least the sixth inning in all five of her starts, including two complete games. During that span she has only given up eight runs, four of them unearned.
White finished the game after five innings, giving up three more unearned runs on six strikeouts and a single walk. Her season ERA currently sits at 0.75, second best in the Big West Conference.
Brookshire’s first two homers came in the first and third inning, giving the team an early 3-0 lead over the Highlanders.
Riverside responded with runs in the middle innings, capitalizing on a couple throwing errors by the Beach and rallying to score the three unearned runs off of White.
Long Beach’s offense ditched the long ball in the 4th, with a pair of sophomores, Cam Cecil and Maddy Ruffin, stealing home plate and scoring on an error to add a pair of runs to the board and make it a 5-2 game.
Brookshire came back up in the fifth inning to hit her third homer of the game, a two run shot, to make it 7-3 Long Beach. Her homers peppered over the walls in left field, right field, and center field.
Long Beach’s offense scored a total of 23 runs during the weekend series, their highest weekend run total since an April 2019 series against Riverside where they scored 24 runs.
Freshman pitcher Shannon Haddad pitched the final two innings of the game, striking out three batters and getting her first save for the team. The Beach won the game 7-3 and improved to 3-0 on the season, tying for first place in the Big West Conference with rival Cal State Fullerton.
Long Beach Softball will play UC Davis in a weekend series starting Saturday at 1 p.m.