The Racers will continue down the path of their 15-game home stretch, taking on Austin Peay and Bethel in the upcoming week.
Last weekend the Racers took two of three games from Morehead, continuing their pattern of nearly sweeping their opponents, but falling just short of that mark.
In the opening two games of the series, the Racers bested the Eagles by 11 points and then six. By Sunday, however, the Racers had lost their steam.
“The third game we came out a little bit dead, just not quite like the day before,” said sophomore pitcher Leslie Bridges. “We let them score a few runs early. We knew that when we let them score those runs that we’d score a lot the day before and that it wasn’t too big of a deal that we were going to score runs on Sunday, too. We just kept fighting and scoring but it just ended up not being enough.”
Though they didn’t manage to sweep the series, the Racers did manage two more wins over the course of the weekend, which is always welcome in the Racer dugout.
“We won the series, which is what we always want to do, but we were really looking for the sweep because they’re in the bottom of the conference,” junior pitcher Shelby Kosmecki said. Happy with the victories, Kosmecki said she wasn’t satisfied yet.
“With the position we’re in, we need to take any games we can,” Kosmecki said. “Winning the series is definitely a good thing, though. It was good that the bats came alive because we’ve been really looking for that lately because we’ve had a lot of games that were low scoring games. So seeing the hitters do what we knew they could do all along was great.”
Continuing the home stretch, the Racers are looking to take advantage of a comfortable atmosphere in hopes of beating last year’s record.
“What we’ve got left are teams we should be beating,” Kosmecki said. “Last year we won 13 games total in the conference and we’re at 12 right now and we still have three series to go so that’s huge for us. We have nine more opportunities to take wins. We just have to keep doing what we’re doing.”
According to Kosmecki, Austin Peay is one of the teams they should be beating. Last year the Governors were another on the list of teams the Racers could beat, but could not manage to sweep, and at this point in the season, the Racers cannot afford to let go of those wins.
“You have to have the same mental edge for both days, which is hard sometimes,” Kosmecki said. “You just have to have the focus to go out there and do it or the teams that you should be beating will find a way to take the game from you.”
However, the stretch at home may be just what the Racers need to push through and manage to take all three games from their upcoming conference opponents.
“The 15-game home stretch is exciting for us,” Bridges said. “We like to play here. We feel comfortable here. We like the support from the people that come and watch us. It helps us get the momentum going. We feel really good going into this. We’re getting rest this week. We feel like we’re prepared to go in and do some big things this week.”
The Racers take on Austin Peay at 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. Saturday, and at 1 p.m. Sunday.