Texas A&M Softball: Aggies sweep opening weekend

Texas A&M softball returned to their winning ways, sweeping through a tournament in College Station to begin their 2018 season.

Fresh off a Women’s College World Series appearance, the Texas A&M Softball team was thrust right into the fire for opening weekend. Instead of a typical 3-game series, opening weekend for Aggie Softball was a full-on tournament that involved playing in two doubleheaders on back-to-back days. Talk about a grind to start out the season. Of course, given that this is the No. 6 team in the country, a sweep wasn’t out of the question.

The first game was a little rough. Samantha Show stumbled a bit out of the gate, allowing two runs to Houston while the Cougars scored two on errors. However, this is a Top 10 team that overcame worse odds to make it to the final dance last season. There was no way they would just roll over, right?

Well, it was a bit late, but a Keeli Milligan triple in the fifth inning scored a run. The Aggies then scored three more runs in the sixth thanks to a dropped pop-up and a timely Sarah Hudek 2-run double. Then, Tori Vidales managed to hit a walk off single that ended the first game of the season in dramatic fashion.

Game 2

The second game, against Boston College, went a little more smoothly. BC’s only run came on an error while Trinity Harrington kept piling up strikeouts. The Aggies only scored 3 runs to BC’s 1, but with Harrington in the circle, that’s all they needed. Payton McBride came in during the seventh and slammed the door.

Game 3

The next day held a second showdown with Boston College as well as one with Texas Tech. Samantha Show started both matches.

In the second Boston College game, BC got off to a hot start on a first inning double scoring two runs, but for the most part, that’s all they got. Luckily, the Aggies tied the game shortly after due to a run scored off an error and a bases-loaded walk. Then, Riley Sartain blasted the first home run of the season in the third, which gave the Aggies the lead for good.

The next inning, the absolutely merciless Aggie team that scores on people I remember from last year showed up, scoring six runs, making it 9-2. Boston College got a run back in the fifth, but a two-run homer by Tori Vidales put the game away for good thanks to the mercy rule.

Game 4

In what ended up being the final game of the weekend, Texas Tech caused a lot more trouble for the maroon and white. I can only imagine that Samantha Show was probably considerably worn out by this point, and it showed when Tech jumped out to a 5-0 lead. But like I said earlier, the Aggies faced worse odds in the past. Ashley Walters scored a 2-run double in the bottom of the third, and that was followed up by a bases-loaded walk. 5-2. A pair of sacrifice flies by Sarah Hudek and Samantha Show made it 5-4.

Coach Jo Evans then went to the bullpen for Payton McBride, and the rest was history. The Aggies scored five runs in the bottom of the sixth to make it 9-5 off a walk, a single and an Ashley Walters 3-run homer. Good night, sweet Raiders.

Sunday’s games were all canceled due to inclement weather, giving the Aggies a complete sweep of the weekend.

Takeaways

Overall, the Aggies looked quite dominant at times, but for a highly ranked team, they never actually scored first in any of their games. In fact, two of the games were comebacks against leads that probably wouldn’t have been given away by more elite teams.

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Of course, the fact that the Aggies were able to rally from 4-0 and 5-0 deficits shows a solid ability to deal with adversity, especially this early in the season along with considerable mental toughness. If they can get those jitters out of the way early and tighten up some of the pitching and errors these first few weeks, look out world.

***stats and information from 12thman.com***