Lawrie stops Ducks in their tracks at Howe 2-0
Freshman Samantha Skillingstad found herself in a pitchers’ duel through four innings with one of the best softball aces in the nation Friday afternoon at Howe Field.
It only took two pitches to end it.
Ashley Charters and Danielle Lawrie each hit solo home runs off Skillingstad in the fifth inning to break a scoreless deadlock and provide the final score for No. 4 Washington, which broke a two-game losing streak to move to 32-7 overall, and 5-4 in the Pac-10. Charters, an All-American second baseman, hit a shot to dead centerfield on a 1-2 count to put Washington up 1-0.
After getting two Huskies into flyouts, Lawrie hit a no-doubt home run to left field that outfielder Sari-Jane Jenkins didn’t even bother to move to contest. he next hitter, Alicia Blake, singled up the middle, sending Skillingstad to the dugout after 4.2 innings, allowing seven hits.
“I missed two pitches and they found them,” Skillingstad said. “It’s nice to play against a good pitcher.”
Oregon’s Melissa Rice pitched 2.1 innings in relief, giving up no runs on two hits, including a strikeout with the bases loaded to end the top of the seventh inning.
Oregon drops to 13-24, 2-8 in the Pac-10, losers of four out its last five games.
Lawrie, a candidate for the USA Softball Collegiate Player of the Year Award, moves to 23-4 on the season. She walked her first batter, Sari-Jane Jenkins, before retiring the next 14 hitters. Oregon’s Carlyn Re broke through with a single through the third base hole against a defense that was playing in in the bottom of the sixth inning. Oregon would place runners at second and third in the inning before Cortney Kivett gound out to first base to end the inning, ending Oregon’s best shot at scoring.
The Ducks sent more than three batters to the plate only twice in the game, including the sixth inning. In their last at-bats in the bottom of the seventh, Neena Bryant ripped a single through third base only to have Lawrie strike out the next three hitters in order. Lawrie finished with 11 strikeouts.
“You gotta give Lawrie a lot of credit. She’s one of the best pitchers in the country,” Oregon head coach Kathy Arendsen said. “We thought our pitchers did well. This could have been ugly, but we held in. That’s growth.”
Oregon committed four errors in the game, two of which were committed by second baseman Kelsey Chambers in the first two innings. None came back to haunt the Ducks.
“We made defensive plays and pitches when we had to,” Arendsen said.
Friday’s game also marked the homecoming for former Oregon player Jenn Salling, who played for Oregon from 2005 to 2007 before leaving the team to concentrate on playing with the Canadien national team. After playing in the Beijing Olympics, Salling told Oregon she wouldn’t return to the team, and transferred to Washington to be closer to her British Columbia home. Her first hit of the season came off Skillingstad in the top of the third inning.
Oregon returns to Howe Field to play No. 3 UCLA on Saturday at 1 p.m. and Sunday at noon.
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