Softball sweeps through Bay Area
By Daily Bruin Staff
May 5, 1996 9:00 p.m.
Monday, May 6, 1996
Bruins extend win streak to 12 with powerful hitting
performancesBy Brent Boyd
Daily Bruin Contributor
Before the UCLA softball team left for the Bay Area to play road
games at Stanford and California, the coaches were trying to get
into the players’ heads the necessity of playing 14 innings of
solid softball.
That wouldn’t have been enough for the Bruins.
It took a three-run home run from Kim Wuest to give UCLA a 4-2,
10th inning, victory over Stanford in the opening game of the
weekend. The Bruins followed their hard-earned win with another
victory in the nightcap, 7-2, followed by a doubleheader sweep of
11th-ranked California the following day.
Although California proved it could provide formidable
competition with a sweep over second-ranked Arizona last week, the
Bruins did not expect much of a challenge from seventh-place
Stanford.
The Cardinal (23-26 overall, 6-16 Pacific 10) came into the
contest on a five-game losing streak, and had lost 15 of their
previous 22 games. Conversely, the Bruins were on a roll, having
won eight consecutive games, outscoring their opponents 67-11 in
that time.
However, none of this really mattered. If not for the bat of
Wuest, UCLA (40-8, 19-7) very likely could have seen its win streak
come to an end.
Her solo homerun in the sixth evened the game, 1-1, thus sending
it into extra innings. Despite the international tie-breaker rules
(in each extra inning, the hitting team starts with a runner on
second and nobody out) neither team could get a run across the
plate until the 10th.
That was when Wuest stepped up to the plate with Nicole Ochoa
and Sandra Burkey on base. Her 12th homerun of the season gave the
Bruins an insurmountable 4-1 lead, and left her only two
roundtrippers behind Jennifer Brundage’s team record, set a year
ago. B’Ann Burns, who pitched all 10 innings, allowed only one
earned run and five hits on the afternoon.
In the nightcap, the entire Bruin lineup picked up where Wuest
left off in the first game, scoring seven times through the fourth
inning, while notching 11 hits, giving UCLA an easy 7-2 victory.
Two hits apiece by Julie Adams and Laurie Fritz, as well as three
RBI’s from Alleah Poulson provided the spark for the Bruins.
Fritz, who had only been hitting .167, carried her hot hitting
from the Stanford game across the bay to Berkeley, where she
managed two hits in each game, sparking the Bruins to 2-0 and 8-3
victories over the Bears (34-20, 13-11).
In the opener, UCLA could only manage two runs, but a five-hit
shutout by Burns enabled the Bruins to come out victorious.
As opposed to the previous meeting in Westwood, UCLA would not
allow the Bears to jump out early on them. Instead, it was the
Bruins that started the game with a huge lead. Behind Kelly
Howard’s 4-for-5 performance as well as a hit apiece from every
player in the Bruin lineup, UCLA scored three in the first, as well
as runs in the second and third, for a 5-0 lead. Three more in the
eighth completed the Bruin hitting barrage, en route to the 8-3
victory.
These victories extended the Bruin winning streak to 12 games,
all on the road, tying their longest streak thus far into the
season.
PATRICK LAM/Daily Bruin
Kim Wuest’s 12th season homerun put her two behind Jennifer
Brundage on the all-time UCLA list.
