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After a difficult start to the season, the M State Lady Spartans were finally able to play on their home field and came away with a split of a doubleheader against Ridgewater College. The Lady Spartans opened the season with six games on the road against some very good competition and came out of that stretch 0-6. The Lady Spartans play in the Southern Division of the Minnesota College Athletic Conference and, once again, it is loaded with very good teams.
Against Ridgewater, the Lady Spartans continued to improve as the day went on. In Game one, they fell behind 3-0 before cutting the lead to 3-2. The Lady Spartans took advantage of a couple of errors to score a run in the third and in the fourth inning Kaisa Jones led off with a double and scored on an RBI sacrifice fly by Kacey Fredrickson.
Freshman Lady Spartan pitcher Alivia Haas pitched well for the Lady Spartans but a couple of hits and defensive mistakes in the late innings allowed Ridgewater to add to their lead, as they scored two in the fifth and four in the seventh to win the game 9-2.
Abby Tysdal and Keely Foley also had hits for the Lady Spartans.
Game two of the doubleheader did not start as planned as the Lady Spartans misplayed some balls and starting pitcher Fredrickson struggled to find the strike zone. Ridgewater scored six in the top half of the first for an early 6-0 lead. The Lady Spartans answered in the bottom half of the first with three runs of their own. Amzie Aho plated two runs with a single and Tysdal followed that with a long double to right centerfield to score Aho to make the score 6-3.
Fredrickson would settle down and pitch an outstanding game the rest of the way, allowing Ridgewater single runs in the top of the second and seventh innings. That gave the Lady Spartans plenty of time to go to work with the bats. They scored six runs in the bottom of the third highlighted by hits from Jones, Chloe Koljonen, Foley and Asher Burslie to take a 9-7 lead. They took advantage of some Ridgewater mistake to add two more runs in the bottom of the sixth for an 11-7 lead.
Fredrickson did run into some trouble in the top of the seventh, but the Lady Spartan defense made the plays to win the game. With one run in to make the score 11-8, Ridgewater had runners on first and second and no outs when the Ridgewater batter hit a sharp ground ball to the third baseman Burslie. She calmly fielded the ball, stepped on third for the force out and fired to Tysdal at first base to complete the double play. Fredrickson struck out the final batter swinging to end the game and the Lady Spartans had an 11-8 win.
The Lady Spartans will play at home Friday against Riverland at 3:00 and Saturday against Rochester at 12:00.