By Mario Williams
After beating Penn State on April 23, the Hawkeye softball players had a chance to win their first Big Ten series on Sunday afternoon at Pearl Field.
However, the Nittany Lions downed Iowa, 11-3, and the Hawks are now 13-32, 3-14 in the Big Ten.
After the Hawkeyes evened the series on April 23, the team’s plan was to attack on Sunday, but Penn State seemed to be doing more of the attacking.
“We wanted to attack in the circle, at the plate, and defensively,” Iowa head coach Marla Looper said. “Unfortunately, we gave them a 2-spot that first inning. We’ve got to still come back from that, because 2 runs is not a big deal. We just needed to take advantage of opportunities we had early.”
Looper believes the team that comes out strong and executes in Big Ten play will usually come on top. Penn State got things going early, sending two runners home on 3 hits in the top of the first inning.
“We did need to try to shift the momentum, and we didn’t completely get it shifted in our favor,” Looper said.
After two scoreless innings, Iowa finally got in the groove in the bottom of the third. Redshirt junior Sammi Gyerman gave Iowa its first hit of the afternoon with a strong single to left field. She went on to score on redshirt senior Holly Hoffman’s double.
“Sammi and I squared up some good balls today,” Hoffman said. “They had a pretty good outfield, so we focused more on trying to hit more hard ground balls. We were trying to do what we could to chip away.”
From there, Iowa was down by just a run, 2-1, but Penn State took control after the bottom of the third, sealing the series win.
Penn State scored 5 runs on 3 hits in the top of the fourth. The Loins followed that up with 3 runs in the fifth and another in the sixth.
“You could tell we were trying to fight back,” Hoffman said. “We were trying to chip away, but we just never really had that big build of momentum.”
Iowa did fight, but it wasn’t enough. In the fourth inning, the Hawkeyes had runners on first and second with a single and a pinch-hit. Sophomore Katy Taylor bunted to put the runners in scoring position, and Kaitlyn Mullarkey came through with a hard RBI single.
Iowa had three pitching changes in the contest as well. Shayla Starkenburg started the game for the Hawkeyes, allowing 6 runs on 4 hits in three innings of work. Freshman Erin Riding and junior Elizabeth Wiegand entered the circle in relief for Iowa.
“Today was a little rough for our team,” Starkenburg said. “Coming in as the pitcher, I didn’t really attack like I should have. It would have been a big win for us.”
